


The Taste of Happiness

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gift Fic, No Reservations AU, Rumbelle Christmas in July, restaurant AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 20:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11585658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Chef Aiden Gold’s perfectly ordered life is turned upside down when he suddenly receives custody of the son he has not seen in almost ten years.  As he tries to bond with teenage Neal, matters are further complicated by the arrival of a new sous-chef in his kitchen, the irrepressible Belle French, who has a very different outlook on life to his own…ANo ReservationsAU, RCIJ gift for still-searching47.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Eh, please don't take Regina to be an example of a good therapist in this. This is all entirely fictional and serves the plot.

**Fic: The Taste of Happiness**

**Giftee:** @still-searching47

**Santa:** worryinglyinnocent

**Prompt:** No Reservations AU

**Title:** The Taste of Happiness

**Word Count:** 27684

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** Chef Aiden Gold’s perfectly ordered life is turned upside down when he suddenly receives custody of the son he has not seen in almost ten years.  As he tries to bond with teenage Neal, matters are further complicated by the arrival of a new sous-chef in his kitchen, the irrepressible Belle French, who has a very different outlook on life to his own…

**=====**

**One**

The kitchen of _Dragon’s Roost_ , the hottest new place to eat in the city according to several critics with no sense of verbal imagination, was running exactly as was usual for a Thursday evening at fifteen minutes past nine. Everything was working as a well-oiled machine, with the chefs in a tense, busy harmony, the waiters and waitresses slipping in and out almost unnoticed, and the head chef in the middle of it all, moving from fridge to grill to pass; everywhere at once and yet never in anyone else’s way. People who worked in a kitchen with Aiden Gold knew that if he was coming in your direction, you got out of his way, and the kitchen staff at _Dragon’s Roost_ , from the kid who washed the pots on weekends to the dependable sous-chef who’d been with Gold ever since the restaurant opened, had learned to get out of Gold’s way without even realising that they were doing it. The entire kitchen worked as a beautiful, intricate dance, and that precision showed in the creations that they produced and served to their hungry customers.

“GOLD!”

The head chef having his name yelled across the kitchen by someone who sounded incredibly angry was not exactly as usual for a Thursday evening, but if pressed, no-one would claim that it was the first time it had happened. Gold, for his part, ignored the summons and continued to plate a perfect fan of lobster tails on a light cream sauce with just a touch of red chilli to add that little extra kick to the meaty tail.

“GOLD!”

The shout did not perturb him at all, and he wiped the edge of the plate with a tea towel before spinning around and setting it on the pass.

“Service table nine!” he shouted to the next member of waiting staff to come into the kitchen, before he finally turned to the person who was hailing him, who had since crossed the kitchen and was standing right behind him, arms folded and a furious expression on her face. “Evening, Mal,” he said benignly.

“Gold, would you care to explain to me why I have just had to waive a $500 bill for table twenty?” Mal’s voice was icy but her blue eyes were flashing fire, and in that moment, she could well have been mistaken for the dread fantasy creature that her beloved restaurant was named after.

“I’d love to, Mal, but I’m slightly busy at the moment.” Gold grabbed the next batch of orders from above the pass and called out to the team. “Two scallops, two beef, one chicken and fire the steak for table three, so rare it’s still mooing!”

“Yes chef,” came the chorus from the kitchen, and Gold neatly side-stepped around Mal to move to the fridge and grab a couple of crème brulées ready for caramelising. Mal, unperturbed and tenacious to the last, followed him, slamming the fridge door shut behind them.

“I leave that front for one minute!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger at Gold’s chest. “One minute! And I come back to find Jefferson trying to prevent world war three at table twenty because you decided it was a good idea to tell a man where he could shove his steak.”

Gold folded his arms, leaning back from Mal’s jabbing finger. “He asked for medium rare and I provided him medium rare. If what he actually wanted was medium well, then that is what he should have asked for. It’s not my fault that he wouldn’t be able to tell a prime medium rare steak if it bit him in the fat backside.”

Mal pinched the bridge of her nose. “Is that what you said to him?”

“No, I think I used more swearwords.”

Mal sighed, and for a long moment nothing was said. Gold grabbed the crème brulées and made to leave the fridge, but Mal held up a hand to stop him.

“Mal, there are customers waiting on their desserts and if you don’t let me out of this damn fridge then it won’t be me to blame when you have to waive their bill.”

“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t throw a raw steak at him and tell him to fucking well cook it himself, like the last time you blew up,” she muttered.

The fridge door opened and a head poked in.

“Boss, Chef, table eight wants to see you to congratulate you on the lobster.”

“Not now, Jeff,” Mal and Gold responded in unison.

Jefferson, Mal’s long-suffering maitre d’ and right-hand man in all matters related to running the restaurant apart from the kitchen, shrugged, but did not move out of the fridge doorway. “Let me guess, today’s private conference is about the steak guy?”

“Yes,” Gold snapped. “Jefferson, you’ll back me up here, the man ordered a medium rare and that is what I gave him.”

“Yeah, the guy’s an asshole but you can’t just yell at someone every time they don’t like your food, Gold,” Jefferson said pragmatically. “You can’t please everyone all the time.”

“I’m not trying to please everyone all the time,” Gold protested. “I just want to please all the customers in this restaurant all the time and I can’t do that when they’re all fucking imbeciles!”

“You know, I’d be really interested to hear what your therapist has to say about your attitude,” Mal muttered.

Jefferson snorted. “Which one?”

“Oh sweet Jesus, don’t tell me you left _another_ therapist?” Mal threw her hands up in the air in defeat and let them drop limply back to her sides. “What happened to that guy Mary Margaret recommended? Dr Hopper?”

“I scared him,” Gold said, finally succeeding in pushing past Mal and Jefferson and getting back into the kitchen, grabbing a blow torch and turning it on in the most threatening way possible.

“Gold, I swear, if this happens again, you’re fired.”

“Oh, for real this time?” Gold asked snidely, sprinkling caramel crystals over the crème and giving Mal a dark look. “Or just for funsies, like all the other times you’ve threatened to fire me.”

Despite the kitchen being just as noisy as it normally was and despite the other staff all seeming to be busy as usual in their normal roles, a knife could have gone through the tension in the room.

“Gold, you are a brilliant chef,” Mal said, her voice cool and barely suppressing the seething anger that was bubbling through her entire frame. “But do not push your luck with me, and do not insult my paying customers.”

She swept out of the kitchen in a wave of fury, and after a moment, the tension in the room dissipated; everyone who had been surreptitiously watching the confrontation out of the corners of their eyes went back to their work. The evening’s entertainment was over.

“I’ll insult them if they insult me,” Gold muttered under his breath, his focus sharp as he browned the crème brulées to perfection and set about decorating them with sugar frosted berries and mint.

“She’s got a point, you know,” Jefferson said, leaning on the pass as Gold worked. The chef looked up with a furious scowl before returning his attention to the desserts. “They are paying us.”

“I don’t care,” Gold growled. “They need to learn to appreciate good artistry. If they just want food that no-one has taken time over or put any love into then they can fuck off to MacDonalds.”

Jefferson gave the heavy sigh of someone who had heard the argument more times than he cared to count. “There are so many things I could say to try and make you see where Mal’s coming from but I’ve got a job to do so I won’t. But I will say this: Gold, you’ve got to stop taking every single thing so personally. Someone sends their steak back and you act like they spat on your mother’s grave. I swear I thought you were going to demand satisfaction and pistols at dawn. It’s just a steak. It’s not the end of the world as we know it.”

Jefferson left the room and Gold sighed, leaning heavily on the counter. Maybe for Jefferson it wasn’t the end of the world as he knew it, but Jefferson, as lovely as the man was, was not a chef. He just didn’t understand the pride that chefs took in their work, in every aspect of it. One miscooked steak could be the end of a career that he had spent twenty-five years building up, so when someone complained about their meal, Gold always made damn sure that their complaint was justified. And ninety-nine times out of one hundred, it was not. It was just that the customer was an idiot who thought he knew better than the chef.

Still fuming with barely contained ire, Gold thought of the man at table twenty with his medium rare steak. He had so wanted to take off his apron, shove it at the guy and haul him into the kitchen, telling him that if he knew best, he should try running the kitchen for the night and see how he liked it.

“Erm, chef?”

One of the waitresses was hovering nervously.

“What?” he snapped.

“The brulée’s on fire,” she squeaked.

Gold swore violently as he realised that he’d left the blowtorch on and it had caught the sugar. He threw his tea towel over the miniature blaze and made for the fridge again. Mal said time and again that he was a control freak with a temper problem, but he wasn’t at all. He just didn’t trust anyone else to do things properly, which was why he took personal responsibility for every dish that left his kitchen.

There were no more incidents for the rest of the evening, the kitchen staff and customers alike having been shocked into quiet and obedience after the earlier confrontation, and by the time the kitchen was closing and the final clean-up was being done, Gold had just about calmed down from his earlier fury.

“Hey.” Mal hailed him as he left the kitchen and he saw her sitting at one of the empty tables with a large glass of sauvignon blanc and the bookings list for the next day. She looked worn down and tired, her usually bouncy blonde curls limp around her face. “The Midases send their regards and congratulations,” she said, although her voice was lacklustre. “One of these days you should actually come out front and meet them, they’re a lovely couple and despite the number of times they’ve witnessed you having a hissy fit, they still keep coming back and thinking you’re the best thing since sliced bread.” Mal leaned back in her chair. “I don’t understand you, Gold. You’ll leave the kitchen and pick a fight in a heartbeat if someone dares to say your food isn’t perfect so I know you take a lot of pride in what you do, but when someone wants to pay you a compliment, you can’t be bothered with them.”

Gold bristled. “I am bothered,” he snapped. “I just have a job to do that I can’t take time away from to receive praise.”

“And yet you’ll take time away from it to receive criticism.”

“That’s different. I’m defending my honour.”

Mal rolled her eyes. “Jefferson’s right about you,” she muttered.

“Will there be anything else?” Gold asked lightly. “I promise you that I’m going to therapy tomorrow morning.”

Mal gave a heavy sigh. “No, no. That’s all. I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe I’ll download some calming panpipe music to play in the kitchen in the hope that you’ll chill out a bit more.”

Gold had to snort at the notion. He didn’t do chilled out. A calm and relaxed chef was a sloppy chef. His therapist would probably tell him that was an unhealthy attitude, but Gold really didn’t care. He knew his profession better than anyone, and he didn’t need anyone else to tell him how to work. Especially not customers.

“Good night, Mal.”

“Good night, Gold.”

The walk to his apartment from the restaurant was a short one; he never liked to live more than a few minutes away from wherever he was working in case there was some kind of emergency. As he let himself in, his gaze alighted on the photograph on the dresser by the front door, a smiling, chubby-cheeked toddler covered in chocolate cake. Of course he was protective of the kitchen and his cooking. How could he not be, when it was the only thing he had left?


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

“I think I’ve worked out what your problem is.”

Gold looked over at Regina with a raised eyebrow.

“Really? Excellent, our work here is done.”

Regina gave him an unimpressed look. He was beginning to think that she and Mal were long lost relatives; there was something in her mannerisms that reminded him of his boss. He could well see why she had recommended Regina to him as a therapist; unlike the other doctors he had seen at Mal’s request, Regina gave as good as she got. Oh, he had no doubt that she wasn’t as hard-hitting and tough with all her clients, and he had to give credit where it was due for her approach to him. That didn’t mean that he had to be happy about it. The two sessions they’d had so far had consisted in the main of him arguing that he didn’t need therapy and Regina positing several reasons why he did.

“You have a desperate antipathy towards receiving help.”

“I do not!” Gold exclaimed. “I’m here, aren’t I? Receiving help?”

“Well, you’re not really,” Regina said. She paused and made a note in the folder that she was looking at. It was the file that all his previous therapists had built up and it was worryingly large. “You’re stubbornly refusing to be helped despite the fact that you’re here. Every time I try to get you to open up, you argue with me.”

There was a long pause. All right, perhaps he couldn’t deny that. But at least he was actually here, so that had to count for something, right?

“Why exactly are you here, Aiden?” Regina asked. There was a small smile on her face, as if she was trying to remain neutral and professional but his vehement denials were just too much for her to try and cope with. “Honestly.”

Gold sighed. “I’m here because my boss will fire me if I don’t come.”

“And why does your boss think that you need therapy?”

“She thinks that I have an anger problem. And that I’m a control freak.”

“Are you?”

“No, of course I’m not.”

“So why does your boss think that you are?”

“Because she’s…” Gold faltered. His first immediate response was to say that it was because Mal was an idiot who just didn’t understand how chefs worked, but that would have been somewhat unfair to the woman who had given him such an amazing opportunity as working at _Dragon’s Roost_ had been. “Because she doesn’t understand me,” he finally finished.

“Well, I’m trying to understand you now,” Regina pointed out. “That’s why we’re having this conversation, which you keep trying to derail to talk about the best way of cooking scallops.”

“Cooking scallops properly is extremely important!” Gold protested.

“I’m sure it is, Aiden, but personally I hate scallops so I don’t care one way or the other how they are cooked. And tell me, do you think that cooking scallops is more important than your mental health?”

“Yes!”

Regina raised an eyebrow.

“Erm, no?” Gold sighed. “Look, can’t you just tell me the answers you want to hear and we can be done here?” He checked his watch; he was expecting a delivery of oysters at the restaurant and if he didn’t leave soon then he’d never get there in time to take charge.

“That’s really not the point of this session. I’d like to go back to the reason you were asked to get therapy in the first place. Your boss thinks you’re a control freak. Why does she think that? Can you think of anything that you do that might give that impression to her?”

“No!” Gold exclaimed. “I just… I like everything to be done correctly.”

“And you don’t trust anyone other than yourself to do it correctly,” Regina surmised.

Gold nodded. “Precisely. I don’t.”

“That brings me back to my original statement. You don’t like accepting help.”

“I don’t like accepting help when it’s not needed,” Gold clarified. “I don’t need any help in the kitchen.”

“You run that kitchen with an army of sous-chefs, waiting staff, and a maitre d’,” Regina said. She didn’t add anything onto that statement and just let it sink in. Gold scowled. All right, so he did need help in that sense, but no chef could run a kitchen completely alone, no matter how much he might want to at times.

“Let’s change tack,” Regina said presently.

“Let’s not,” Gold snapped, checking his watch again. “I really have to go, I need to get to the restaurant.”

“To do what?” Regina asked mildly.

“I’ll be here all morning elaborating, now if you don’t mind?”

“Aren’t there other people at the restaurant who can do whatever it is you’re so badly needed for?”

“Yes, of course there are.”

“Then why not let them do their jobs?”

“Because…” Gold sighed.

“Do you not trust them to do their jobs?”

“It’s not that. I do trust them. I just… trust myself more.”

“And why is that?”

Gold finally rounded on her. “Because everything I have done in this life, I have done by myself,” he snapped. “I have built up my reputation from nothing. No-one helped me. I started at the bottom and now I am at the top and I did that without any help from anyone, because no-one gave a flying fuck about me enough to want to help. All through my life, the only person I’ve been able to rely is myself. Is it any wonder that I still do that?”

He was panting from the force of his raging outburst, but Regina’s face remained neutral.

“And there we have it,” she said. “The root of all the problems. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

Gold scoffed. “Don’t patronise me.”

“Aiden, I can say quite frankly that you are one of the worst patients I have ever had to deal with,” Regina said coolly, “but despite all that, I do give a flying fuck about you and I do want to help you, if you can accept that. Mal sent you to get therapy because she wants to help you. The people who work under you in the kitchen want to help you. But if you keep pushing everyone away because you’re so determined that you don’t need help and that no-one wants to help you, then to be perfectly blunt, you’re going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you won’t accept help, no-one will offer it.”

The clock on Regina’s desk beeped; their time was up.

“I’ll see you at the same time next week,” she said. “I want you to think about what I said.”

As he left the therapist’s office, Gold did think about what Regina had said. He defiantly decided to ignore it.

X

“So what did the therapist say this morning?” Jeff was leaning on the pass during a lull in service; Mal was taking care of the front. Gold was plating scallops and lobster tails whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on his signature horseradish cream sauce. “Which one are you on now, is it still that scary one Mal’s girlfriend recommended to her?”

Gold nodded, not looking up from the plates. “Regina Mills. Yes.”

“Wow, you actually stayed with her for more than two sessions. I’m impressed.”

“I like her. She’s blunt, although wrong.”

“Right… You know you do that thing where you say ‘Jeff, no offence, but what do you know about cooking?’ Well, ‘Gold, no offence, but what do you know about psychology?’”

“She said I had a problem accepting help.”

“Sheesh, I could have told you that and all I’ve got is a community college diploma in hospitality management.”

“Poached pheasant for table eighteen, chef.” One of the younger sous-chefs placed a plate down in front of Gold, who just looked at it in disgust.

“Sean?”

“Yes chef?”

“What the fuck is this?”

“P-poached ph-pheasant, chef.”

“It’s a bloody disgrace is what it is. I can’t have that coming out of my kitchen. Look at it.” He prodded the limp meat. “It’s all stringy. Do it again.”

“Yes chef.”

Sean took the plate away and Gold glanced up at Jefferson, who was looking amused.

“Look, is it any wonder I do everything myself when that’s the quality of the help I get?” he snapped. “No wonder everyone thinks I’m bloody neurotic.”

“One person makes one mistake and you immediately think that no-one can do anything,” Jefferson pointed out. “Like the other day, and the steak. It’s not the end of the world. Your reactions are kind of extreme.”

Gold glared at him. “Don’t you have some place to be?”

“I do.” He grabbed the plates of lobster and scallops and sashayed out of the kitchen. Gold sighed, and the kitchen phone began to ring.

“Will someone get that!” he yelled. Sean, who was nearest, made to move towards the phone but Gold shook his head. “Not you, Sean, you’ve done enough damage today.”

Mulan reached across from the grill and grabbed the receiver. “ _Dragon’s Roost_ kitchen.” A pause. “Chef, it’s for you!”

“Busy right now.”

“Chef, you’re going to want to take this.”

“I’ll call them back, nothing’s so important it can’t wait till the end of service.”

“Chef, this is. It’s your lawyer.”

Gold rolled his eyes and left the pass, wiping his hands on his tea towel and taking the receiver from Mulan.

“You know, you’d better have a really good reason for calling me at work,” he growled.

_“Well, you’re never anywhere else,”_ the snide voice on the other end of the line countered. Unseen by the caller, Gold’s eyes narrowed. Unfortunately, that was true, but he wasn’t going to give Spencer the satisfaction of knowing that.

“Well, what is it? Is the guy I threw a steak at trying to press for damages again?”

_“No, it’s more serious than that. Gold, this is about your son.”_

Gold’s blood ran cold.

“Is he all right? Is he in trouble?”

_“No, no, Neal’s perfectly fine.”_

“Then why the hell are you calling?”

_“Neal’s mother has decided to give up her parental rights to him.”_

“What? She can’t do that! She’s got full custody of him! You know that full well, you were the one arguing the custody trial!”

_“Well, Milah has decided to leave the country and sail around the world with her new paramour and she declined to take Neal with her,”_ Spencer said. _“Unless you’d prefer him to go into care, then you have full custody of Neal now.”_

For the first time in his working life, Gold did not take in any of the kitchen bustling around him. His world was reduced to just him and the phone.

_“Mr Gold, are you still there?”_

“Yes, yes. I’m here.” His mind was blank. What could he do now? He hadn’t seen Neal in about nine years, ever since the divorce. Milah had taken him to the other side of the country and Gold had always been too busy with the restaurant to go and see him. He had no idea what his son was like any more. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave him to go into care. He’d been abandoned by his own parents and he sure as hell was not going to let it happen to his child.

“Where is he?” he asked, choked. “Neal, I mean.”

_“Right now he’s in my office,”_ Spencer said. _“But he can’t stay here forever.”_

“Can you keep him till end of service?” Gold pleaded.

_“I’m not a childminding service, Mr Gold.”_ Spencer’s reply was cold, and Gold suppressed an agonised groan. He had to go and get Neal, but at the same time, he really couldn’t just leave the restaurant in the middle of service, everything was bound to go wrong, they’d all fuck it up without him and then no-one would eat there again and he’d be out of a job and he’d never get another one because his reputation would be ruined from this and then he and Neal would be living on the streets and…

“Gold?”

Jefferson was back in the kitchen, looking concerned.

_“Mr Gold?”_ Spencer pressed.

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Gold said into the phone before hanging up, and he turned to Jefferson. “Jeff, we need to close the kitchen, tell Mal we can’t take any more orders tonight.”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“I have to go and get Neal, Milah’s done a bunk.”

“And that warrants closing the entire kitchen? Gold, I know you’re a brilliant chef but we are actually capable of functioning without you.”

“No you’re not!” Gold hissed. “Look at the poached pheasant, for fuck’s sake! If I wasn’t here that would have gone out!”

“Gold.” It was Mal’s voice. “Go and get your son. We can deal with this.”

“But…”

“No buts. Your son is more important than this restaurant and if you can’t see that then you don’t deserve to be a father.”

It was the angriest that he had ever heard her, and he’d heard Mal angry before. For once, Gold did not argue with her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

Gold always felt naked without his whites on. In the kitchen, he knew where he stood. He was in command, he was the one in control and everyone else answered to him, respecting his hard-won authority. Outside, in the great big wide world that existed beyond that kitchen, he had no idea what he was doing, and the loss of that uniform was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome. He couldn’t wear his whites outside of the restaurant, it was unhygienic, and that was the only thing that had stopped him from going over to Spencer’s office without getting changed. He was entering an unknown, and he was doing so without his armour. He stared at his face in the mirrored elevator doors as he rode up towards Spencer’s office, wishing that he didn’t look quite so overwhelmed by the entire situation.

Gold had made his career out of being ready for just about anything. He could shout and scream in the kitchen as much as the next chef and he lost his temper readily, but he could cope with the unexpected, as long as it came in culinary form. This didn’t fall into that category by a long shot. It had been so long since he had seen Neal; Milah had left and taken him with her when he was five, and now nine years later, Gold had no idea what he was going to do with his son. Would he even recognise him?

The elevator doors pinged open and he stepped out into the plush surroundings of Spencer’s firm’s floor, moving quietly along the soft carpets until he found the correct door and knocked.

“Come in.”

As he entered, Gold’s eyes immediately went to Neal, sitting on the sofa by the door, immersed in his Gameboy and paying no attention to what was going on around him. God, he’d grown so much that he was barely the same boy that Gold had said a tearful goodbye to all those years ago before his mother had hauled him off to California to go and live with her latest boyfriend. Gold wondered if it was the same one she’d gone sailing with.

“Hi,” he said. What was the etiquette for reconnecting with a son you barely knew?

Neal looked up from the console and stared at his father for a long time, saying nothing, and the silence in the room was screaming. Spencer, sitting at his desk and watching the proceedings with the distinctly uncomfortable air of someone who has no children and has no idea how to deal with them, cleared his throat politely.

“Mr Gold, there’s some paperwork you need to sign.”

“Of course, of course.”

He didn’t really take in any of the custody documents as he signed them on the dotted line, just putting his name and initials where Spencer told him to. It was unreal, like stepping into another life, one that could have been had he won the custody battle all those years ago. But he hadn’t won it, the court ruling that his unsociable working hours and known anger management issues meant Milah was the better fit to take full custody, and so Gold had given his son up for lost and immersed himself in his work even more than he had already done. As he worked through the papers, he kept glancing over at Neal, who was watching the proceedings with wary interest, attempting to look like he didn’t care and was only interested in his game, but stealing peeks every few seconds with an unreadable look of what was possibly worry on his face. If Milah had been feeding him some kind of poison about his father’s temperament, then Gold didn’t know what he would do.

“There, that’s everything.” Spencer shuffled all the papers together in the official manner that lawyers have. “You can go now.”

It was a dismissal rather than a suggestion, and Gold looked over to Neal.

“Come on, Neal. Let’s go home.”

The boy just nodded and shoved his console back in his backpack, getting up and leaving the room without another word. He was halfway down the corridor towards the elevators when Gold caught up with him.

“You know, you used to talk a lot more,” he said, possibly the most inane and least helpful thing to say, but nonetheless the only thing that he could think of at the time. “When you were younger you were a right chatterbox, but you haven’t said a word since I got here.”

“You were busy,” Neal muttered, not looking at him. “It’s all right, I know you don’t want me. I won’t get in the way.”

“Neal, I do want you,” Gold pressed. “It’s all just come a bit suddenly, that’s all. I’ve only had an hour to get used to the idea of you being back in my life.”

The look that Neal gave him broke his heart. It wasn’t reproachful in any way, but it made him seem so much older than his fourteen years. It was a resigned look, as if he’d been pulled around from pillar to post so often that he simply no longer cared as long as there was a roof over his head.

“Look, I’m sorry that I haven’t been around these last few years.”

“Nine years,” Neal corrected.

“Nine years. But now I’ve been given a second chance to get things right with you.”

Neal nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced.

“Are you still a chef?” he asked.

Gold nodded. “Yes. I’m a head chef now, at a restaurant called _Dragon’s Roost._ It’s pretty famous.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Yeah, well, I guess its renown doesn’t travel as far as California.”

They fell back into silence during the taxi ride back to Gold’s apartment, until the point they stopped at a red light at the corner where _Dragon’s Roost_ sat. Neal was looking at the restaurant with interest, his eyes inquisitive but not inquisitive enough to actually ask any questions. Gold peered through the taxi windows, trying to work out what was going on inside. It was incredibly tempting to ask the driver to pull up there, and just pop in to check that everything was running smoothly in his absence, but he knew that if he did that then he’d get drawn back into working a full shift and leave Neal outside in the taxi until midnight, which child protection services probably wouldn’t approve of.

The light went green and they moved away from the restaurant, leaving it out of sight and out of mind behind them. Neal stayed quiet for the rest of the journey and throughout the tour of Gold’s apartment.

“Are you hungry?” Gold asked eventually. Food was a natural recourse for him. If in doubt, feed people. People couldn’t talk when they were eating, it cut out the need for awkward silences and even more awkward conversation. Maybe that was why he kept cooking for all the different therapists that he’d tried over the years and why none of them had got anywhere with him. Perhaps if he started feeding Regina they’d get on better.

Neal nodded hesitantly, but for once in his life, Gold was at a complete loss. What did teenage boys eat? Moreover what did teenage boys eat that he had in his cupboards? He cooked a lot, cooking was his life, but when he was at home, his dishes always tended towards the experimental, always thinking about new things that could be introduced to the restaurant menu.

“What would you like?” he asked. Neal shrugged.

“You’re the chef,” he said.

Gold sighed and went into the kitchen, putting on his apron and gathering knives and pans.

“Well, is there anything that you don’t eat? Apart from bananas?

“How did you know I don’t like bananas?” Neal had followed him into the kitchen and was leaning in the doorway.

“You’ve never liked bananas. I was around for the first five years of your life and it hasn’t been blocked from memory entirely.” He pawed through the fridge. “Salmon?”

“All right.”

Neal settled himself at the kitchen table with his Gameboy and Gold began to work, keeping half an eye on the food and half an eye on his son. He was completely at a loss, no idea where to even begin. He loved Neal, he always had and always would, but sending cards and gifts twice a year for birthdays and Christmas was very different to having him in his home on a permanent basis.

Neal was distracted throughout the meal, just picking at his food.

“Not hungry after all?” Gold asked.

Neal shook his head. “Not really.”

“Ok. I can appreciate that it’s a big change, but I hope you’ll be happy here.”

It sounded like such a cliché thing to say, and Gold didn’t know how he was going to get around it. How did one parent? He and Neal had been so close before the divorce, but although the memories were indelibly and painfully tattooed on Gold’s heart, it was clear that Neal did not remember them. The distance between them, in time and in miles, had taken its toll, and he had no idea how he was going to mend that.

Neal spent the rest of the evening in his room, unpacking the few things that he had brought with him and playing on his console. By the time his son was asleep, Gold’s brain was even more wired than it had been before, and he sat down on the sofa, staring into the darkness.

Now more than ever, he needed help and advice, but he had no idea how to go about getting it, and he was so ingrained to be averse to the idea that he didn’t know how to go about changing the habit of a lifetime. His next session with Regina wasn’t for another week, and he couldn’t call Jefferson or Mal for help. They’d laugh at him.

A small, sensible voice in the back of his mind told him that they wouldn’t laugh at him, that they would want to help him because they were his friends, but the slightly less rational part of him took over, firmly shutting down the sensible part and reminding him that needing help was weakness and he was not weak. This was something that he had to do by himself, even if he had no idea what he was doing.

Eventually he gave up trying to work out what the hell he was going to do with himself and went to bed, unable to sleep for worrying about what would happen come the next day. His entire life had been changed with just one phone call, and whilst he was thrilled to have Neal back in his life, he had no idea how to change his life to accommodate his son. Something had to give, but he didn’t know what.

After lying in the dark for half an hour, Gold sat up, grabbing his phone. Service would have ended and they’d be clearing up. He needed to ring Mal and ask her how everything had gone in his absence, what he needed to be prepared for the next day.

Her phone went straight to voicemail and Gold left a snippy message, throwing the thing onto the bed with a muffled yelp of frustration. Didn’t she realise how important it was for him to know these things?

A noise outside his room caught his hearing and Gold crept over to the door, peering out to see a light on in the kitchen. He padded a little closer, finding Neal rummaging around in the cupboards.

“Hungry?”

His son jumped away from the pantry with a guilty look on his face.

“Yeah. You don’t have any midnight snack food.”

“What constitutes midnight snack food?”

“I dunno. Anything with a vague amount of sugar in it? Cookies? Breakfast cereal?”

“You know, all of that stuff is more additives than sugar. It’s not proper food. If it’s something sweet that you want, then there’s lemon syllabub in the fridge. Homemade.”

Neal gave him a look that Gold couldn’t even hope to understand and shook his head.

“Forget it,” he grumbled, pushing past his father out of the kitchen. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

Neal’s door had swung shut behind him but through the wood, Gold thought that he heard the word ‘life’. He sighed, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the fridge. He had no idea what he was doing wrong, and in that moment, it seemed better not to rock the boat.


	4. Chapter 4

**Four**

Although Mal had told him to take a week off to get Neal settled and get his own life sorted out after this massive upheaval, Gold found himself walking back into _Dragon’s Roost_ after only two days away. To say that Mal and Jefferson were surprised to see him was probably an understatement; the maitre d’s jaw dropped when Gold walked into the place and for a few moments the usually loquacious man was rendered utterly speechless. Considering he was making recommendations from the wine list to guests at the time, that was possibly not all that advantageous, however much Gold might have wanted to shut the man up before now when he was giving particularly sage advice that Gold did not want to listen to. Mal was similarly stunned; she was on the phone in the office as he went past and she gave him an incredulous look, glancing over at the calendar on the wall to check that she had not suddenly lost a few days of her life.

As he neared the kitchen, Gold could tell that something was wrong. There was music coming from inside the room; the radio was on. The radio was never on in the kitchen, he had forbidden it. It was a distraction to the staff. Whoever was responsible for this was going to get a very stern talking to. He paused outside the door, listening to the chatter and laughter from within. Honestly, he’d been away all of two days and the place had gone completely to ruin. If Mal thought that he was going to take a week off after seeing the shambles that his kitchen became in his absence, then she was mad.

Gold strode into the kitchen, and with the exception of the radio and a solitary voice, the entire place fell into deathly silence, all eyes fixed firmly on him. The one voice that had remained speaking was young, female and Australian, and Gold had never heard it before in his kitchen at all. It was coming, he noticed, from a very petite young brunette woman in chef’s whites in the middle of the room, in the place where he usually held court as head chef.

As if sensing that something terrible had happened, the woman’s voice tailed off from where she was talking to Aurora, and she spun around on her heel to face Gold.

“Hello,” she said brightly, and she held out the hand that was not holding the large chef’s knife. “You must be Chef Gold. Pleased to meet you.”

Gold looked down at her hand as if she was offering him a poisonous snake, and then back at her face. He would admit to being slightly wrong-footed by how fresh-faced and pretty she was, and, annoyed at himself for being so disarmed by beauty, he lashed out.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Belle French, I’m the new sous-chef,” she said. Her hand was persistent and unwavering, and Gold ignored it, storming through the kitchen and yanking the radio’s plug out of the socket, the music dying in a soft groan.

“Well, he seems friendly,” he heard Belle remark as he slammed the kitchen doors open again and thundered off towards the office. Who did she think she was, waltzing in here whilst he was gone and playing music in his kitchen and disregarding all his rules?

Mal was off the phone and was evidently waiting for him, her expression calm and passive, arms folded, ready for whatever it was that he was going to throw at her.

“I don’t know who she is, I don’t care who she is, but get her out of my kitchen right now!” he yelled.

“No,” Mal replied calmly. “Besides, you’re not supposed to be here, remember?”

“So you think you can completely overturn a kitchen I have spent _years_ building up and maintaining behind my back whilst I’m away?” Gold snapped. “I thought I knew you, Mal, I thought we were friends, but if this is the way I’m repaid for everything I’ve done for this place…”

“Gold, we need a new sous-chef.” Mal’s voice cut through his tirade firmly. “It might have escaped your notice because you’re an incredibly single-minded man, but Aurora’s ready to drop a baby at any moment and you now have responsibilities that mean you cannot spend every waking hour micromanaging this place. And for the record; it’s my kitchen, just as this is my restaurant, and I will hire whoever I please to work in it. Belle has an excellent track record; she’s one of the rising stars that everyone’s had their eye on for a while now, and we’re lucky to have her. You should be honoured.”

“Honoured! Some half-rate…” He wasn’t quite sure how to describe Belle, having only been in her presence for all of twenty seconds. “And I should be honoured that she’s in there practically setting fire to my kitchen!”

“You should be honoured because Merlin Emrys offered her head chef at _Camelot_ , but she turned it down to accept my offer because she wanted to work with you. Although given the way you’re acting at the moment, like a spoiled child, I’d be amazed if she doesn’t pack her bags and go to _Camelot_ right now.”

“How am I acting like a spoiled child!”

Mal sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Gold. Belle is staying, she is becoming top sous-chef once Aurora goes on maternity leave, which will be any minute now, and you are going to have to live with that. Since you seem determined to work even though I have explicitly told you not to, I suggest that you get back in that kitchen and apologise for the terrible first impression that you’ve given Belle, and attempt to get along with another human being for the first time in your life.”

Gold opened his mouth to protest, but Mal did have a point. The only other person he seemed to share an even vaguely cordial relationship with at that moment was Jefferson, and even he had his moments.

“Fine,” he snapped. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“I am not asking you to be best friends with her. I am simply asking you to work with her civilly and give her the respect that she deserves.”

“Well, right now, that’s in the negative figures,” Gold spat.

“And why, precisely, is that?” Mal asked. There was a dangerous tone in her voice, the one that meant he was pushing his luck just a little bit too far.  It had forced him to back down from a confrontation more than once in the past. When he thought about it, Mal did have a point. He hadn’t actually seen Belle cook yet. He’d seen her talking to his staff, and have the radio on.

“I’ll give her a chance,” he said through gritted teeth. “But the moment that she slips up, she’s out of here.”

“And you’ll find a replacement, I presume? Someone who meets your stratospheric standards?”

“There will be no need of a replacement. I am perfectly capable of running this kitchen without assistance, thank you Mal.”

He left the office, unwilling to be drawn into a further dispute, and went to change into his whites and return to the kitchen.

The radio had remained off – he’d probably broken the thing in his ire – but Belle was back to chatting animatedly with the other staff and the light-hearted demeanour in the kitchen had returned, and did not dampen when Gold came back in. Belle just raised an eyebrow at him.

“It appears that we’re going to have to work together, Miss French,” he said gruffly.

“There’s no need to make it sound like you’d rather be having all your teeth pulled without anaesthetic,” Belle said dryly. “But if it makes you feel better, we can split the menu and that way our paths never have to cross, since you seem so repulsed by my presence.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” At least that way, if any customers complained about the dishes that Belle had produced, the blame could not fall to him.

They spent a few minutes arguing over the menu – it was very hard for him to even relinquish part of it, yet alone the half that Belle was asking for – and then Gold got down to work, trying to put Belle’s presence in the kitchen to the back of his mind. It was only when Jefferson came in and began talking to her at the pass that he was forced to acknowledge that she was there. Jefferson had a very distinctive laugh, and it was not one that Gold heard all that often when the maitre d’ was coming in and out of the kitchen. But there he was, laughing and joking with Belle at the pass. For some reason, an intense stab of jealousy shot through him, and he glared at Jefferson, the traitor who was daring to make friends with the imposter in his kitchen.

Jefferson caught his black expression, and simply raised an amused eyebrow in response. Belle followed his eye line, saw Gold, and rolled her eyes, patting Jefferson’s arm and sending him on his way, before giving Gold a little benign look as if challenging him to protest against her behaviour.

Gold returned his attention to his sauce, determined not to make anything more of it, and soon he was caught up once more in the everyday bustle of the kitchen, Belle’s happy chatter blending into the background like all of the other unnecessary sounds did. Belle kept to her side of the kitchen and he kept to his, and everything was working as it should until one of the waiters brought a plate back.

“Table seventeen, venison’s not cooked properly, too pink.” He handed the plate to Belle, who took a look, shrugged, and called over to Aurora at the stove.

“Fire up another venison for table seventeen.”

Unable to help himself, especially when it came to customer complaints, Gold came over and inspected the plate on the pass.

“No, wait,” he called to Aurora. Belle raised an eyebrow at him. “There’s nothing wrong with this venison, it’s perfectly cooked and presented.”

The corner of Belle’s mouth quirked in a momentary smile.

“Thank you for the compliment, chef, but if the customer wants it less pink, then we’ll cook another. He’s the only one that suffers, because his food will take longer, and at the end of the day he’ll tip better if he’s satisfied.”

Gold shook his head.

“No, that’s not the point. Have you no pride in your work?”

“Of course I have pride in my work and of course I think that’s a perfectly cooked and presented piece of venison, but ultimately, Chef, I work in customer service and my job is to give the customer what he wants.”

“Are you a chef or not!” Gold exclaimed. “A customer has insulted your work and you’re just going to stand there and take it!”

“A customer having a different opinion of what constitutes perfectly cooked venison is hardly an insult, Gold. Besides, how long does it take to cook a piece of venison, Aurora?”

“Eight minutes, give or take,” the sous chef called. She’d since put the fresh cut on to cook and was watching it carefully.

“And how much does a venison plate cost us to prepare? I don’t know, but I can guarantee that me going out there to argue with the guy will take longer than eight minutes and it’s time I can better spend in here, and me going out to argue with the guy who will then demand some kind of discount as a result of the chef picking a fight with him will cost us far more than plating another meal will. I’m as proud of my food as the next chef, Gold, but you have to know when to pick your battles in this business.”

There was steel in her voice, and in that moment, Gold could see the young woman who had been headhunted for the prestigious _Camelot_ head chef position. As much as he hated to admit it, Belle knew what she was doing.

He was caught off guard then, completely unsure how to respond. His first impression of Belle had been thrown completely off by this shrewd display, and he would admit that it was refreshing, the way that she stood her ground and refused to be cowed by him, despite the antagonistic way he kept behaving towards her, but at the same time he was angered by her calmness in the face of what would have been, to him, a gross insult to his cooking ability.

“Chef, why don’t you do your things your way and leave me to do my things my way,” Belle suggested. “I think we’d end up with less altercations like that, don’t you?”

Gold gave a curt nod and returned to his own station, glancing up every now and then to watch what Belle was doing. He saw her plate the new piece of venison with care and precision, taking her time and making sure that it was perfect just as he did, but there was no conscious mimicry in her actions. What she was doing came naturally to her. He hastily turned off the blowtorch before he could ruin another brulée in the space of a week, and took a moment to really watch Belle, after the venison went out again and she moved on to the next dish. She definitely had a natural flair for proceedings and he would admit that she was a good cook. She knew her stuff, even if her style was completely different to his.

Presently Mal came in.

“Belle, the people on table seventeen wanted to thank you, they said the venison was perfect and they really appreciated the extra effort.”

“Thank them for me Mal, and tell them that I hope they’ll come back soon.”

Gold just snorted, and Belle turned to him.

“Have you got a problem with that?” Her mouth quirked in a smile again and Gold wished that he didn’t find it so attractive.

“Miss French, you’ve just welcomed back a customer who thinks you can’t cook with open arms.”

“Well, actually, I didn’t. I welcomed back a customer who appreciates the care I put into my food and his enjoyment of it.” She paused. “Are you jealous because I’m getting compliments and you’re not?”

Gold scoffed.

“I really couldn’t care less about customers complimenting me.”

“No, you only care when they complain,” Mal muttered before she left the kitchen.

“I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it’s you who does not take pride in your work, Chef Gold,” Belle said, causing Gold to slam his spatula down on the surface.

“What did you say?”

“You’re so defensive about what you cook, yet you don’t care about people liking it.” Belle shrugged and turned back to her own plates, leaving Gold speechless for the second time that evening.

“She has got a point, Chef,” Aurora said, coming over with a couple of plates of lobster tails and setting them down before grimacing and rubbing her back. Gold narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t you take her side,” he grumbled.

“Not taking a side, just stating a fact. You’re the only person I know who gets grumpy when they’re given a compliment, just saying.”

Aurora crossed the kitchen again, and she and Mulan started talking in hushed tones over the grill.

Gold got the distinct impression that they were discussing him, and he didn’t like it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Five**

As much as Gold had hoped that Belle would have somehow vanished into the ether when he returned to the restaurant the next day, and everything could go back to normal as if she had never been there, it seemed that he was not going to have such luck. When he arrived in the afternoon for the daily briefing, she was there at the foot of the table, serving up the staff meal. That was something that was usually Aurora’s job, and Gold noticed that his faithful sous-chef was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Rory?”

“Hospital,” Mal said, sounding remarkably cheerful at the prospect of one of her staff having a medical emergency. “She went into labour at five o’clock this morning, Philip texted me.”

“Oh.”

Whilst he knew that Aurora was having a baby, of course he did, her actually having it and no longer being in the restaurant for the foreseeable future wasn’t something that he had properly taken into account. With one head down, Mal was definitely not going to be letting Belle go any time soon, so it seemed that he was going to have to put up with her. He took his seat at the head of the table as Mal went through the day’s news, and he looked down at the dish that was put in front of him. He’d been assiduously avoiding Belle all through service yesterday so he had not yet sampled her cooking.

“Eat up, chef,” she called from the other end of the table. “You know that you shouldn’t cook on an empty stomach, it impairs your judgement.”

Gold knew that, and not having had any lunch, his stomach was growling in agreement, but he still couldn’t quite bring himself to take a bite of what looked like a delicious meal.

“It’s all right, I haven’t poisoned it you know,” Belle added, earning her a laugh from the rest of the table. Gold scowled and took a forkful. It was a beautiful risotto, the rice cooked to perfection, not too dry and not too gloopy, with just the right amount of parmesan mixed into the sauce to give it the sharpness that it needed, and the earthy mushroom flavours were not overpowering. Did he detect truffle in there as well?

“Well?”

He glanced up from the plate to see Belle looking at him expectantly, waiting for his verdict.

“It’s passable.”

“Well, coming from you chef, I consider that to be high praise indeed. Anyone for a second helping?”

The meeting came to its conclusion and the staff back into the kitchen to prepare for service, but Mal held Gold back.

“You have got to be civil to her,” she said. “Aurora won’t be back any time soon and I know you think you don’t need any help, but that kitchen needs an experienced sous-chef. So for the love of God, Aiden, play nicely please.”

“I will be a paragon of civility,” Gold replied sweetly. Mal narrowed her eyes but said nothing more and let him go.

The dynamic in the kitchen had changed, that much was clear to see. Belle’s arrival had upset the status quo that had held for as long as Gold had been at the restaurant, and as much as he wanted to rail against it, Gold had to accept that change was a part of life. That didn’t mean that he had to like it, though.

As he entered, Belle came over to him.

“So, Chef Gold,” she said. “I know we didn’t get off on the right foot yesterday, but I hope that we can work together better today?”

Gold nodded slowly. Be civil. Belle wasn’t the enemy, the kitchen was not a warzone, however much he might feel like it was. He had to learn to get along with her or Mal would not be happy, and although Gold did not fear for his job, he would still prefer to keep a good working relationship with his boss.

“Excellent. So, what parts of the menu do you want to do today? I’m happy to take on seafood, it’s my speciality.”

Gold shook his head, he had never entrusted the seafood to anyone else before. “Where did you train, Miss French?” Gold asked.

“Here and there,” Belle said brightly as she retied her apron. “I didn’t go to a specific culinary school, if that’s what you’re asking.” A twinkle came into her eye as she continued. “I know, I know, another sacrilege to kick me out of the kitchen with. Most of what I know, I learned from my mother. She was a very good cook.”

“I’m sure she was, but she’s hardly a replacement for a professional education.”

“If you’re really that worried about my credentials, Chef, you’re welcome to take a look at my résumé.” Belle’s tone was light but he could hear the steel in her voice. “I’ve come from the _Sea Devil_. Does that fulfil your seafood credentials?”

Gold nodded, slightly stunned by this revelation. _The Sea Devil_ , owned by Ursula Del Mar, was one of the most renowned restaurants for fish and seafood in New York.

“Excellent. I’ll take on seafood for today then.”

She moved away into the depths of the kitchen, leaving Gold staring after her in silence.

“You know, if you stand there any longer someone’s going to try and serve you to the public. Chef à l’orange.”

Gold glanced over at Jefferson who had come into the kitchen and was watching the proceedings with a calm air.

“I see that the lovely Miss French is continuing to astound you?” he added. Gold nodded. He wasn’t sure what it was about Belle, but there was something in her fearlessness that meant he had absolutely no idea where to start with her. He was used to terrorising his sous-chefs; Aurora had been the only one of many he’d trained who’d stuck around long enough to earn his respect. Having someone who refused to be afraid was… interesting.

X

“So how are you getting on with Neal?”

Gold looked across at Regina, who was watching him with a guarded, unreadable expression, and sighed. He wasn’t sure what the correct answer to that was.

“Well, I’m going to assume from your silence that things haven’t been plain sailing,” the therapist continued. “If you want to talk about it, now might be a good time. There are all kinds of techniques that you can use for communicating with children if you’re having trouble.”

“He’s not really a child,” Gold said with a sigh. “I think that might be part of the problem. I’ve missed out on so much of his life, and now that he’s back in it I don’t know the first thing about him. He’s not five years old anymore, he’s like a completely different person. How can I possibly try and relate to him when I don’t even really know the first thing about him?”

“Well, maybe talking to him about himself would be a good place to start. Get to know him a bit better, like you would a new colleague at work.”

“I don’t tend to get to know new people at work. I tend to scare them into submission first. Except Belle, of course, who point blank refuses to be scared.”

“Belle?”

“New sous-chef, Mal hired her because she thinks I need help.”

“You disagree.”

“I think that she could have consulted me before she went ahead and did it.”

“It’s her restaurant, Aiden.”

“Yes, but it’s my kitchen and I’m the one who’s going to have to work with Belle and pick up the slack when things inevitably go wrong.”

“Has anything gone wrong so far?”

“Well…” There was the venison that had been sent back on that first evening he and Belle had been in the kitchen together, but Belle had handled that with aplomb – not the way he would have handled it but she’d still handled it – and other than that, there had been no cause for concern. He’d been watching her like a hawk for the slightest of mishaps that he could call her out on, but she did everything well, if in a slightly more unorthodox manner.

“Maybe you ought to stop worrying about what might go wrong and that has not, as yet, gone wrong, and bring your thoughts out of the kitchen a little more. Maybe trust Mal to know what she’s doing in her own restaurant. Ultimately, these problems will be hers rather than yours.”

“You don’t know the restaurant business,” Gold snapped. “A chef can make or break a restaurant. A good one can propel you to superstardom and a bad one can drag you down into the gutter.”

“All right, I might not know the restaurant business, but don’t you have faith that your employer knows it?”

Gold sighed. Yes, on the face of it he did have faith in Mal and her ability to know what was best for her business.

“I think it’s the lack of control that worries you,” Regina said, and Gold rolled his eyes.

“Of course it is. I’ve had complete control over what goes out of that kitchen for years, and now I haven’t. I can’t just suddenly start trusting someone else to do my job as well as I do it. Only I know how to do my job in the way I do it.”

“Have to say it, Aiden, you know how the other week you said that Mal had accused you of being a control freak?”

“Yes.”

Regina spread her hands. “I said it before – you need to start trusting other people to do their jobs properly. You may be the most experienced person in that kitchen but you’re not the only one, and all of the others have been trained. You’re not working with imbeciles, you’d explode if you were.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Gold snapped. “But Mal seems to have got it into her head that I need help and I can’t prove to her that I don’t if Belle is there taking some of my responsibilities!”

There was silence for a long time, and Gold was beginning to wonder if Regina had suffered some kind of seizure that was leaving her immobile and unable to talk.

“The passion that you have for your restaurant is laudable,” she said. “And I’m just wondering if perhaps you could use that to your advantage as you try to bond with your son again.”

Gold snorted. “Neal hates anything to do with food. He won’t eat anything that I cook him.”

“Have you tried cooking him normal kid food and not stuff that’s restaurant quality?”

Gold gave her a withering look. “Of course I have, but I’m not feeding him garbage out of a box from the freezer. I don’t get what I’m doing wrong.”

“Well, maybe it’s Neal’s relationship with food that’s the problem. Have you considered taking him to the restaurant with you and showing him what it is that you do? If you’re having trouble bonding with him because your lives are so different, it makes sense to introduce him to yours. Then perhaps he’ll volunteer more about his, because he’s seen you open up about your own life and work.”

On the face of it, Gold’s immediate reaction was to say no, that it would be both ridiculous and impossible to bring a teenager into the kitchen; he’d get in the way, he’d be a health and safety risk, Mal would never allow it…

But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Although he gave him the silent treatment half the time, Neal was not ultimately rebellious and generally did as he was told, and as long as he didn’t interfere with what was going on and didn’t get underfoot, Gold saw no reason why he shouldn’t observe the proceedings. And Mal wouldn’t mind in the slightest, he already knew how much she loved children and she would be happy to meet Neal, and pleased that Gold was at least trying to make an effort. It might be good for them.

“All right.” He nodded slowly. “That might work.”

“Good. I’m glad you take at least some of my suggestions on board.”

Gold narrowed his eyes at her.

“You know, I don’t have to take any of your suggestions on board.”

“I know, you’d rather think you were wasting your money by coming here.” Regina gave him a shrewd look. “You may not think it now, Aiden, and you might be determined to see this entire venture as pointless, but Mal’s done the right thing in asking you to come to me. I think in time you’ll see the benefits too.”

Gold decided that he would reserve judgement on that.

“I think we can end the session there for today,” Regina said. “At least try and give Belle some credit for doing her job and not being scared of you. You can’t be both feared and loved.”

“If you’re feared then there’s no need to worry about being loved,” Gold countered.

Regina just raised an eyebrow.

“You know, until I adopted my son I held a very similar attitude. But now I’ve found that being loved is much less hard work. Maybe in time you’ll see that too.”

Gold left the office in even more a quandary than he had entered it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Six**

Gold took a deep breath. Time to put Regina’s advice into practice and see if she was worth the money he was paying her.

“Hey, Neal.”

Neal looked up from his Gameboy, not speaking, but his eyes intent on Gold’s face. With a pang, Gold wondered if Neal’s constant near-silence came from his relationship with his mother. He had not really paid much attention to what his ex-wife was doing after she left him, but he had been paying maintenance and had had a few discreet updates from Spencer telling him about the kind of lifestyle she had been living in California; a string of rich boyfriends among them. If Neal was used to his voice not being heard, then there was never any reason for him to talk.

“I was wondering if you wanted to come to the restaurant with me tonight. There’s no school tomorrow, after all, and it would give us a chance to spend some time together.”

Well, sort of. He wasn’t really going to be spending all that much time with Neal if he was working the entire time, but at least they would be in the same place and Neal wouldn’t feel like he was being abandoned.

His son didn’t say anything for a long time, and Gold tried a different tactic.

“You’d be able to see what I do, and meet some of my colleagues. They’re all dying to meet you, you know.”

Neal gave a little smile that he hastily squashed. “Really?”

Gold nodded. “Yeah, you coming to live with me was big news. We’re chefs, we don’t get a lot exciting happen in our lives except when someone becomes a parent or discovers a new type of mushroom. We haven’t had any new mushrooms but we’ve had two new kids in the space of a week and since you can walk and talk, you’re going to be a lot more interesting than Aurora’s baby. Or a mushroom for that matter.”

Neal laughed.

“Ok. I’ll come. Might be interesting. Can I bring my Gameboy?”

“Sure.” Hell, he could set up camp in the office if he wanted; Gold was just desperate to get him a change of scenery and find something, anything, that he might be able to bond with his son over. Cooking was what he knew, so that was where he would start. If he could actually get some nutritious food into his son at the same time, then that would be even better.

They arrived at the restaurant a little after Gold would normally get there and the staff were all already in the kitchen getting ready for evening service. They all greeted Neal with enthusiasm, for which Gold was grateful. Whilst they had all been asking about him and had been excited to meet him, he hadn’t been sure how people would react when they actually met him, but they all seemed to be happy to welcome warmly him into the kitchen, no matter what their opinion of his father might be.

“Right, you find a spot out of the way and please don’t play with the blowtorch, and get comfortable,” Gold said. Neal nodded, settling himself on a bench at the back of the kitchen and getting out his Gameboy, but Gold noticed that he did not turn it on and was more engrossed in what was happening in the kitchen. Mulan offered to show him how to grill peppers, but he shook his head, cheeks going red, and turned his attention to his game.

Gold went to get his whites and apron on, feeling satisfied that whatever might happen, this was not another evening that he was spending completely separated from his son. When Mal came in to announce that the restaurant was open and the first customers were arriving, she did a double-take on seeing Neal there, but gave a smile and a nod of approval towards Gold. Maybe he was doing something right after all.

X

Belle had been watching Neal out of the corner of her eye for the past half an hour, and she was beginning to form an impression of the boy. Well, young man, he was on the verge of not being able to be called a boy any more. Despite feigning disinterest in the proceedings and seeming to be glued to his Gameboy, it was obvious that he was actually taking in a lot more than everyone gave him credit for, his eyes following people around the kitchen, watching the way the dishes moved. He was incredibly observant, and she wondered how much that skill had come in handy throughout his life so far, the ability to seem zoned out but truly be aware.

It was clear that he was interested in what was going on in the kitchen, and a part of him was itching to be involved or to ask Gold something, but Gold was absorbed in doing what he did best and was not paying his son any attention, except to glance over and smile in his direction every now and again. Belle could not really begrudge him that; given the calibre of restaurant that he was running his focus had to be knife sharp and his attention was split several ways at once. It was not that he was ignoring Neal, just that there were more pressing matters to attend to at any given time. But with Gold back in the kitchen running things as normal, Belle’s own role could take a little bit of a back seat. So Gold was having trouble engaging Neal in his life. Maybe Belle could help build a bridge. Although her acquaintance with the prickly head chef had been brief, she’d been able to tell almost from the first moment that she’d met him that he was a closed, proud person who did not want to ask for help of any kind even when he needed it. Like, perhaps, now.

“Chef, I’m taking five.”

“Yes, yes, dearie.” He waved her away without a word and she grabbed some bread, coming over and pulling herself up onto the counter beside Neal.

“So, what are you playing?” she asked, looking down at the game screen, which was showing the game over warning. Neal looked down at it, then up at her, his face slightly guilty.

“It’s ok, I get that the kitchen’s more interesting. No harm in that.” She tore off a chunk of bread and offered some to Neal, who declined. “Yeah, I’d kill for a burger right now but they don’t serve them here. What’s your favourite food?”

“Bagels.”

“Well, you’re in luck my friend, New York has the best bagels in the world. You should get your Dad to take you to Fred’s, it’s about two blocks from here. No other bagel can compare, I promise you.”

“I dunno.” Neal looked down at his shoes. “He doesn’t seem all that into junk food.”

“Well, that’s just because he knows food and knows what goes into good food to make it good. It’s like me and burgers. I’d never get one from one of the fast food places, but one that you make from scratch? With prime steak mince and good onions that practically melts in the mouth… Now that’s a good burger.”

Neal smiled for the first time since coming into the restaurant.

“Dad’s favourite is burgers too,” he said. “At least I think it is. I remember having burgers with him before I went to live with Mom.”

“Maybe he could make them with you some time.”

“Maybe. I think he only cooks fancy stuff though.”

“Fancy stuff can be good too. Have you ever eaten rabbit?”

Neal wrinkled his nose. “No…”

“It’s a real delicacy here you,” Belle said with a grin. “All game meat is. Very expensive, very tender. It’s your dad’s signature dish. Rabbit wrapped in bacon.”

“I do like bacon,” Neal ventured. “But why does it have to have rabbit in the middle of it?”

Belle just laughed.

“Because chefs like to experiment. But it wouldn’t be his signature if he didn’t make it well and if people didn’t like eating it. Maybe you ought to give it a try some time. There’s no harm in being adventurous.” She winked at him and hopped off the counter, leaving the bread. A couple of minutes later she looked back to see him eating it.

Gold caught her eye, looking from Neal to her and back again, an incredulous expression on his face.

“How did you manage that?” he asked.

“Manage what?”

“To have a conversation with him that lasted more than five words, and get him to eat something?”

“Well, the conversation I can’t really help with but I think he’ll eat when he’s not under scrutiny. Maybe he’s used to having meals on his own and doesn’t like people watching him when he’s eating.” Belle shrugged. “I don’t know. Just… try to get inside the head of a fourteen-year-old. I think he’s just shy, really. But I’ve had an idea, though.”

Gold raised an eyebrow.

“What might that be?”

“Make him your signature.”

“Belle, if he doesn’t eat chicken and fish there’s no way he’ll eat rabbit.”

“Well, don’t make it for him then,” Belle said. “Make it for yourself. You can take a few minutes to cook and plate up some rabbit. Trust me, I think I can handle the kitchen for the time it takes you to take a break.”

Gold looked over his shoulder at Neal, who had finished the bread and was looking around the kitchen again, his game forgotten on the counter beside him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.”

“Great. Hey, Neal,” she called over to his son. “Why don’t you come and watch the master at work?”

To his surprise, Neal came over, standing on the other side of the counter and watching intently as Gold began to work, deftly wrapping bacon around the game meat and beginning to cook it. Even though he wasn’t used to teaching people how to cook, he found himself talking through all the stages as he went. Once it was plated with some leftover vegetables on the side, he offered it to Neal.

“Want to try? Now that you know how it’s made?”

Neal shook his head, looked at the plate intently, and then gave a little nod, grabbing the offered knife and fork and beginning to take a small bite. Gold purposefully left him to it, and went over to Belle, who was watching the proceedings from the hotplate where she was working, a fond smile on her face.

“Thank you,” he said earnestly. “I was beginning to despair of ever getting through to him, if I’m honest.”

Belle just gave a soft laugh. “It’s perfectly ok to ask for help if you need it, you know,” she said. “No-one’s going to hold it against you. You and Neal are both in a new situation and need guidance. It’s perfectly natural. Sometimes it just needs a fresh pair of eyes on a situation to see what can change.”

Gold nodded. He had to hand it to Belle, she did have a point. Since she had come into the kitchen and started introducing him and the other staff to different ways of doing things, it had made life a little less of a challenge at times. He thought back to her philosophy regarding customer complaints, but mentally he knew that was one argument that he was probably never going to get behind.

Mal came into the kitchen, casting her eye over the proceedings, and she gave Gold a grin.

“I must say that you’re the last person I ever expected to bring their kid to work, Gold, but Neal definitely seems right at home here. Any chance of him training up to follow in your footsteps?”

Gold gave a snort of laughter. “I doubt it.”

Although, now that he’d said it, it did not sound like such a ridiculous notion after all. Neal was smiling properly for what seemed like the first time since he came to New York as he chatted to Mulan at the grill, still taking little bites of his meal, and he seemed to be genuinely interested in what was happening in the kitchen. Food was Gold’s passion, and maybe Neal was now seeing just why that was.

All through the time Neal had been growing up, especially during the nine years that they had spent on opposite sides of the country, Gold had never given any thought to Neal entering the restaurant business. At the time, it had just seemed ultimately impossible and he’d dismissed it out of hand. Now though, perhaps he had the ability to make a pipe dream come true; if Neal wanted it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Seven**

They settled into a routine after that, with Neal coming along with Gold to the restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights, and after the first two visits, he stopped bringing his Gameboy with him and was content to watch the proceedings and chat to the other chefs about what they were making and what their favourite foods were. He was becoming more and more animated outside of the kitchen as well, and they’d shared a few successful meals together where Neal would actually eat rather than just picking at his food.

Belle, Gold would have to admit, was a lifesaver. She was never too busy to talk to Neal and was always happy to demonstrate things to him; likewise she was equally happy to pick up the slack whenever Gold wanted to take a breather and break the rest of the staff’s monopoly on his son and get some time to himself. She had settled into the way the restaurant worked now, although she had not lost any of her individuality, and no matter how much Gold might blow up when things did not go right, she did not lose any of her sweetness or patience. She was always gracious, and Gold could not help wondering why she had chosen to work under him rather than to take up her own head chef position. His reputation as a chef was a good one, but he was known for being a hard taskmaster and a perfectionist, not a person that most people would choose to study under. She was an enigma, and the more he worked with her, the more he found himself wanting to know more about her.

Gold was not the only one who was showing an interest in the new sous-chef. Neal seemed to be equally enamoured with her, and would chatter on about her all the time on their way home from the restaurant each night. They had just got into the apartment one Saturday when Neal asked a question completely out of the left field that had Gold floundering for words.

“Do you like Belle?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you like Belle?”

“I… How do you mean?” he hedged.

“Well, you’re constantly sneaking glances at her whenever you’re in the kitchen together,” Neal said, his voice matter of fact. “It’s kind of obvious that you’re checking her out.”

“I am not checking her out!” Gold protested. “She’s new to the restaurant and I’m making sure that she does her job properly so as not to embarrass me.”

“But you look at her even when she’s on a break and isn’t doing anything that might damage your precious reputation,” Neal said. There was a cheekiness to his voice that Gold had not heard there before, and whilst he was frantically panicking that his opinions of and feelings towards Belle were the thing under scrutiny, he was also incredibly glad to hear the animation in Neal’s tone. He could probably live with a little needling if it meant interacting with Neal more.

“I think you like her,” Neal continued sagely. “I mean, _like_ like her.”

“I… She’s a good chef,” Gold admitted.

“If she’s a good chef then why are you constantly checking up on her to make sure that she’s doing it right?” Neal asked.

Damn, he’d been caught out there. “I enjoy watching her work.”

“Riiight.” The sarcasm in Neal’s voice did not go unnoticed. “Sure. You don’t fancy her at all.”

“I do not… Neal, I’m nearly fifty years old, people my age do not fancy other people. That’s for young people.”

“Hey, there’s no age limit on love,” Neal said. “Look at all these pensioners who find romance at ninety in their retirement homes or whatever.”

“Really, Neal…” He paused. “So what would you say if I said I did like her? Which I don’t.”

“I think you’re in denial there, but if you said you did like her, then I’d say that I think she likes you back.”

“Neal… She doesn’t like me. She can’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m old and grumpy and I was pretty horrible to her the first time I met her.”

“Well, people change.” Neal grinned. “She looks at you all the time too. I’m kind of amazed that you haven’t caught each other looking by now.”

Gold had to wonder. He had caught Belle looking at him, but he’d never thought for a moment that it could be because she liked him.

“It’s my birthday next Sunday,” Neal said, completely changing tack out of the blue, and Gold had to double-take.

“Yes, I know it is.”

“Well, I know what I’d like to do.”

“And what might that be.”

“I’d like to invite Belle over.”

“I… Are you sure, Neal? Wouldn’t you rather invite some of your friends from school?”

“I haven’t really made any yet, and none that I’d consider close enough to have over for a party. I’ve got more friends in the kitchen. Besides, we can have a party just the three of us. It’ll be cosy.”

“Well, if you’re sure…” Gold himself was not at all sure about the idea. “I mean, Belle might have her own plans.”

Coming to think about it, he realised that he actually knew practically nothing about the woman, whether she had a family or significant other of her own that she would be spending time with when the restaurant was closed.

“No, she doesn’t,” Neal said. “I already asked her.”

“You already invited her?” Gold yelped.

“Yeah. Well, pending your permission, but I didn’t think that you’d say no.”

“I…” Gold shook his head in despair. “Well, if that’s what you want, then Belle’s more than welcome to come over.”

He was already having an internal panic attack at the thought of it. Being in the kitchen with Belle was one thing but welcoming her into his home was quite another. Good lord, it was going to be the most awkward evening ever. Well, he supposed that they could fall back to talking about Neal or about food, which were topics that Gold never tired of discussing. And it was Neal’s birthday so he’d be calling the shots anyway.

All the same, he was going to have to talk to Belle about this. The thought was terrifying.

X

“You’re looking pensive,” Jefferson said.

Belle sighed and nodded. It was the middle of the week, and she was due to go over to Gold’s to help celebrate Neal’s birthday that Sunday. She’d been stewing about it ever since Neal had asked her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go; she was happy to make Neal happy and ever since that first conversation they’d shared about their favourite foods, he’d been talking to her about her famous homemade burgers. It was Gold that she was worried about. In the few weeks that she had been working at the restaurant, she had not been able to get a proper read on the man and now her feelings towards him were completely confused. Her first impression of him had been an unfavourable one, but Belle wasn’t the type to take first impressions as the be all and end all. People could change, for both worse and better, and Gold had definitely shown her a different side to him over the past few weeks when she had seen him with Neal. He was still defensive, still ridiculously protective of his kitchen and the food that he produced in it, but they were learning to work together and complement each other’s styles rather than being in constant conflict all the time. The more she saw of Gold, in those rare unguarded moments when he would smile and show such pride in his work and such pride in Neal, the more she found herself warming to him and wanting to know so much more about him. Whatever other numerous faults he might have, Gold obviously really loved his son.

What she wasn’t sure about were his feelings towards her.

“I don’t know what to do about Gold,” she admitted to Jefferson. The two of them were in the wine chiller; Jefferson was selecting a bottle for a table to pair with their desserts, and Belle was taking a breather from the heat of the kitchen, letting the chiller calm her flushed face. She’d ordinarily retreat into the cold room for a while, but she wanted to talk to Jefferson. Of all the people in the restaurant, he seemed to have the best rapport with Gold, and would be the most likely to be able to give her the answers that she wanted.

“In what sense?” Jefferson asked, comparing dates on two bottles. “Sometimes I think that smacking him upside the head with a skillet is the best way of dealing with him and I’ll quite happily give you an alibi if you want to do that. You were here with me in the chiller the entire time and no-one can tell me different.”

“No, no, not like that. Although smacking him upside the head with a skillet has sounded quite appealing on more than one occasion over the last couple of weeks.”

“Ok.” They left the chiller and Jefferson went to wipe the bottle before presenting it to the table. “What do you mean then?”

“I just… I’m really not sure where I stand with him. He was so antagonistic when I first came here and I was sort of prepared for that, but now he’s mellowed towards me so much, and Neal’s here in the kitchen regularly and he’s amazing, and now Neal’s basically invited me around on Sunday and I don’t know how to approach it. I… I’m really not sure if I’ll be welcome.”

Jefferson gave her a wry smile. “Oh believe me, you’ll be very welcome by both of the Gold men. I think I can safely say that I’ve never really known Gold speechless before but you have a knack for stopping words coming out of his mouth. He might be brusque, but that’s probably because he hasn’t dated in about five hundred years. All right, maybe only four hundred. Actually please don’t tell him I said that, he’ll bet getting a complex and accidentally handing me hot plates. Do you chefs go through some kind of initiation ritual where you burn your hands so much they turn into asbestos and you can withstand any kind of heat? It’s insane the temperatures you put your hands into!”

Belle laughed. “No, you just build up a tolerance. So you think I should take this as an invitation for perhaps something more?”

Jefferson winked and her and went over to deliver the wine to the table. When he returned, Belle’s break was almost up and she was getting ready to go back into the kitchen, but he caught her eye again.

“If that’s what you want to see it as, then I really don’t think that you’d be going wrong with it.”

Belle smiled. “Thanks Jefferson.”

She went back into the kitchen just as Mal was coming out of the office, and the older woman raised an eyebrow on seeing the spring in Belle’s step.

“Well, something appears to be happening,” she said to Jefferson as she came back out into the main restaurant. “Have you been meddling again?”

“Many a perfect match has been made in heaven thanks to my meddling,” Jefferson said. “But no, actually, it’s not me. It’s Neal. He’s far more observant than he lets on, you know.”

“I know, that’s what I’m worried about.” She peered through the kitchen doors, watching Belle and Gold interact with each other. “It is nice to see them no longer at loggerheads, but you know what Aiden’s like. Give him the most benign scenario ever and he’ll still be able to read it completely the wrong way.”

“Yes, unfortunately I know his proclivity for that only too well.” Jefferson sighed. “I think that Belle would be good for him, though.”

“I know that Belle would be good for him. I just don’t know if he’d be good for Belle. I don’t want her getting jaded before her time.”

“Well, all we can do is wait and see. They’re both sensible adults, they can take things slowly.”

“Adults yes. Sensible, perhaps not.”

Mal moved away to go and greet a couple of guests who had just come into the restaurant, and Jefferson was left with his thoughts. Strange that he should have become the fount of all knowledge when it came to Gold, with Belle now seeking his advice. He only hoped that it would turn out to have been good advice. He glanced back through at Gold in the kitchen.

“You’d better not screw this up,” he muttered to his friend.


	8. Chapter 8

**Eight**

It was almost six o’clock on Sunday when the doorbell rang, right on cue, and Neal rushed to go and let Belle in, racing down the stairs two at a time to help her carry her bags up to the apartment. Gold had to double take when he saw everything that she had brought with her.

“I do actually have some cooking equipment and ingredients of my own, you know,” he said as Belle started unpacking everything onto the kitchen table. “I know it’s a strange thing to imagine of a chef, but there we are.”

Belle just looked at him and rolled her eyes, and Gold threw his hands up in defence.

“All right then, so what are we cooking?”

“Neal and I are cooking your favourite,” Belle said. “You can watch and learn from the master.”

Gold paused for a moment.

“You’re making hamburgers?”

Neal nodded. “Belle makes the best hamburgers.”

“You haven’t actually tasted one yet, you know,” Belle pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’ve heard you talking about them and they sound amazing,” Neal said.

“And what should I do during this?” Gold had since sunk into a seat at the kitchen table and was watching Belle continuing to pull things out of her bags. “What is that?”

“That is dessert,” Belle said, clutching the clingwrapped container close to her chest and then putting it into the fridge. “And it is my secret recipe, so I hope you enjoy it.”

“We do have birthday cake,” Gold said, indicating the confection on the side that he’d spent the morning creating. It had already had a couple of slices taken out of it as Neal hadn’t wanted to wait for his guest to arrive before sampling his father’s baking skills.

“I know,” Belle said. “But this one’s for us.” She winked. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of coffee liqueur that’s gone into it.” She turned back to Neal. “Ok, young man, show me your cooking skills.”

“Yeah, you can be the customer tonight, Dad,” Neal said. “Just sit back and relax and enjoy letting other people do the cooking.”

“But I like cooking!” Gold protested. “There’s a reason I do it for a living!”

“Yes, but isn’t it always nicer to enjoy food that you haven’t had to make yourself? Why do you suppose that so many people come to the restaurant every day? Besides, you can wash up.”

Gold gave a good-natured sigh. “So it’s like that, is it? I see.”

Nevertheless, as Neal and Belle got down to work, it was nice to be able to take a step back, not having the constant fretting of running the kitchen going on in the back of his mind. Maybe Mal was right and he did have a control problem. He knew he would never be comfortable taking a step back when he was in the restaurant, but here in his own home it was different. It was great to see Neal so enthusiastic about cooking, and although a part of him thought he ought to be annoyed or jealous that it was Belle who had teased this enthusiasm out of him, he couldn’t bring himself to blame her in any way. He was just grateful.

The way that she had managed to fit so seamlessly into his and Neal’s lives was both wonderful and terrifying.

Neal looked to be in his element as he helped Belle to create the burgers, and Belle had a way of teaching that made it look effortless.

“You know Neal, you’re really a natural at this,” she said. “You could have your own restaurant.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Belle looked up from the homemade tomato relish she was mixing to go with the burgers and smiled.

“What would we call it though?”

“Well, I would say that it ought to be something to do with gold,” Belle suggested. “A nice little play on your name.”

Neal thought for a few moments.

“ _The Golden Plate_ ,” he said finally. “And we could serve all the food on gold plates.”

“Might be a bit expensive,” Gold pointed out.

“Meh, details. Belle, I think these burgers are ready.”

“Ok, I guess it’s time to cook them.”

Gold continued to watch from his position as guardian of the ingredients on the table. _The Golden Plate_. It was as good a name as any. As the burgers began to cook on the grill pan, Gold wondered how long Neal’s enthusiasm for cooking would stay, and whether it would last past Belle’s influence in his life.

X

It was late into the evening when Neal excused himself to his room, and Gold got the impression that he was purposefully giving the two adults some time alone together. He really wasn’t sure what his feelings towards that were. If Neal was trying to set him up with Belle, then… Well, he wouldn’t mind it to be honest, but it would be nice to know Belle’s feelings on the matter too. He knew that she and Neal had been in cahoots since before her coming over today was announced so casually, so presumably she knew a little of what she was letting herself in for. Maybe she had just come to be polite and respect Neal’s birthday wishes.

“Thanks for coming,” Gold said. They were sitting on the sofa and Belle had brought her dessert out of the fridge, ready for its grand unveiling.

“It’s been a pleasure,” Belle said. “Neal’s fantastic and spending time with him always brings a smile to my face.  His father’s not bad either.”

Gold gave a snort of self-deprecation, not entirely able to believe what he was hearing, and Belle gave him a look.

“You’re really not the dragon that you try to be, you know. At least, I don’t think you are.”

“The others in the kitchen would probably disagree. Well, apart from Jefferson.”

“He might despair of you sometimes but he really does see you as a friend and he wants the best for you, and for Neal. I think everyone does.”

Gold sighed. It was true that Jefferson and Mal only had his best interests at heart when they attempted to stop his blood pressure going through the roof when he was faced with some idiotic customers, but their tough love could be, well, tough, and Gold’s natural response was to fight and argue, like he did with everyone who didn’t agree with him. Belle included, although she seemed to take it better than anyone else.

“Still, we haven’t had the best part of the evening yet.” She unwrapped the dessert dish to show a perfectly set chocolate mousse, dusted with cocoa powder. “Mocha mousse, my own recipe.”

Gold took a spoonful and Belle did likewise, and before he could put it in his mouth, she chinked her spoon against his in a toast.

“To Neal’s birthday,” she announced. “Long may his success in burger cooking continue. And to _The Golden Plate bistro_. Whenever it might happen.”

They ate the mousse in silence for a few moments.

“So what do you think?” Belle asked. Although her tone was light, Gold could see that there was the tiniest hint of trepidation in her face, anxiously seeking his approval. He smiled, taking another spoonful of the rich mousse.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I think I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is the best chocolate mousse I’ve ever tasted. The alcohol is there but it’s not overpowering and the sharpness cuts through the richness of the cream. It’s not too sweet, you can really taste the bitterness from the cocoa. Most people tend to go overboard on the sugar when they make a mousse like this, and they forget that the chocolate is the most important part and you need to be able to taste it.”

Belle’s smile could have outshone the sun.

“Thank you,” she said. “I know it might sound clichéd, but that really does mean a lot, coming from you. I don’t think I could ask for higher praise for one of my recipes.”

“You’re very welcome.” Her words brought him full circle to a train of thought that he had been coming back to for a long time. “Belle, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you choose to come and work under me, instead of becoming a head chef in your own right? _Camelot_ is an incredibly prestigious place to make your debut.”

“I know. I just didn’t think that it was the right time for me to take the lead. There’s still more for me to learn to just hone that edge on my skills. And I wanted to learn it from you.”

“My reputation as a mentor isn’t really stellar,” Gold pointed out.

“I know. I think that was one of the things that attracted me to you. I love a good mystery, and I had to see if you really were as terrible as they painted you.”

“Oh, I’m darker, dearie. Much, much darker.”

Belle shook her head. “No, I don’t think you are. You’re passionate, you just have a different way of showing it than other people. You’ve built up this huge great mythos around being a stereotypical ill-tempered chef who picks fights with his customers, but that’s not really who you are underneath.”

“So who am I underneath?” Gold asked. He had spent so long inhabiting the persona that Belle had described that he didn’t really know what else he could be.

“I’m still figuring that out,” Belle admitted. “But I know that you’re a man who really loves and cares for his son, even if he does have his ups and downs. You can try and say that you’re completely heartless, but you’re really not.”

“I have no idea what I’m doing half the time when it comes to Neal,” Gold admitted. It felt strange, talking so candidly to someone who wasn’t his therapist, but Belle seemed to inspire that easy trust and rapport that made him want to open up to her. Just as he wanted to find out all there was to know about her; he didn’t mind her finding out all that there was to know about him.

“I’m sorry that we got off to such a bad start,” he said. “I’m just not used to my ways being challenged.”

Belle shrugged. “No-one particularly likes change,” she said. “We all have our own ways of doing things and when we’re made to change them we always feel slightly martyred. But I like to think that we’re getting along a lot better now.”

Gold nodded. “Yes, I think we are. Although there may yet be altercations over a blowtorch depending on what we end up cooking. I do enjoy the little twists that you put on the menu. You’re definitely adding your own touch, I like it.”

Belle raised an eyebrow. “Really? And there was I thinking that everything had to be done by the Book of Gold and there was no room for creativity or individuality.”

Gold narrowed his eyes, unsure if she was being serious or not, and Belle rolled her eyes, batting his arm playfully and laughing.

“I’m just teasing you,” she said. “But it’s nice that you are letting me have some creative control.”

“Well, since you wanted to learn from me, I figured that was best. I can teach you my techniques but ultimately you’re going to want to be a chef in your own right with your own signatures.”

“That’s very true.” Belle took another spoonful of mousse, looking thoughtful as she sucked on the spoon in a way that made Gold feel some incredibly unprofessional things about her. “Although there is one thing that you haven’t taught me.”

“And what might that be?”

“The secret to your horseradish cream sauce that all the critics can’t stop raving about. You had another amazing write-up in the Times today and they always mention it. So what’s your secret ingredient?”

Gold laughed. “Well, if I told you that then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it? There are some things that a chef just has to keep to himself. Speaking of secrets though, just how much coffee liqueur did you put into this mousse?”

“A fair amount. Why, feeling tipsy?”

“I’m really not sure yet.” His inhibitions were certainly lowered, but whether that was the booze in the dessert or the wonderful company he could not tell.

“Well, don’t worry. Whatever deep, dark confessions you’re about to spill are safe with me.”

“I’m still not telling you the secret of the horseradish cream sauce,” Gold pointed out.

“I can live in hope.” Belle readjusted her position on the sofa, kicking her shoes off and tucking her feet up underneath her. She was so relaxed and at home in his apartment, and Gold had to wonder what the place would look like if she was sitting there on a regular basis. There was a smudge of chocolate on her lips and he licked his own involuntarily, resisting the urge to reach out and wipe it away, or better yet, lick it off her.

Belle’s eyebrow quirked. “What?”

“You’ve got chocolate there.”

Belle long pink tongue shot out, trying to catch the wayward smear, but no matter how much she tried and how much she contorted her face, she couldn’t get it. Gold couldn’t help bursting into fits of laughter.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.” She grabbed a napkin and wiped her mouth, cleaning away the chocolate. “Better?”

Gold nodded, “Yes, that’s better.”

“Good.”

There was silence between them then, and it was a strange, tense silence, containing none of the ease that they had built up throughout the evening. Something was going to happen, and when Gold found himself leaning in to capture Belle’s lips, he wasn’t at all surprised.

Belle didn’t seem all that surprised by his action either, welcoming his mouth readily and burying her fingers in his hair. She tasted of chocolate and coffee, hardly surprising, but it was a taste that was intoxicating and when they finally broke away, it left him wanting more.

“I…” Once more he was at a loss for words. How often had that happened when she was in the vicinity?

Belle just laughed. “Perhaps I ought to go before the Tia Maria goes to our heads and we do something completely irretrievable. But… Perhaps we could do this again some time? Just us two, comparing recipes.”

“And the kissing part?” Gold asked, his voice a little strangled.

“Yeah, I’m up for a repeat of the kissing part if you are.”

Gold nodded. Yes, he was definitely up for a repeat of the kissing part.

Belle gathered her things, telling him to keep the mousse, and he saw her out of the apartment. As he closed the door and turned back inside, he saw Neal peering out of his bedroom.

“So, did you kiss?”

Gold rubbed his forehead with a sigh. “Was this entire thing to try and matchmake?”

“Well, not the _entire_ thing. I really did want to sample Belle’s burgers. But I thought that it was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”

“Jefferson put you up to this, I swear,” Gold muttered.

“Well, he did help, but it was entirely my idea. You haven’t answered the question yet. Did you kiss?”

“Yes, Neal, we kissed, are you happy now?”

“Very much so. Night, Dad.”

“Goodnight, son.”

Neal disappeared back into his bedroom and Gold leaned back against the front door with a sigh.

Well, at least Neal approved of the fledgling relationship between him and Belle.


	9. Chapter 9

**Nine**

Gold was not one for being nervous. He had never really had all that much time to be nervous; he usually went straight to ‘incredibly angry’ without any kind of middle ground. But standing outside Belle’s apartment block waiting to be let in, he felt undeniably nervous. The last time they had been on a date, it hadn’t really been a date, and it had been in his own home where he felt in control, even though the food had been taken out of his hands. Now he was venturing into Belle’s domain, and he could not stop his brain from going through every single possible scenario that could go so terribly wrong.

The door buzzed and he let himself in, making his way up the stairs towards Belle’s place feeling as if he was heading to the gallows. He knew that he really shouldn’t be feeling like this and that fear of death was not a normal reaction to going on a date with one’s co-worker, but rationalising it didn’t help.

Belle was leaning out of her front door as he approached, and she gave him a little smile.

“You don’t need to look as if I’m about to eat you,” she promised. “I’ve got food in; your toes are safe.”

“I know,” Gold said, overly brightly, cringing that he was looking so obvious that Belle had picked up on it. At least she didn’t seem to be offended. It was a week since their first kiss after Neal’s birthday, and there had been a definite change in their dynamic at work. Jefferson and Mal had both remarked that they seemed to be getting on a lot better than they had before, and Jefferson had given them both a knowing look; although he had said nothing Gold knew that he knew. Maybe Neal had been passing him updates, he wouldn’t put it past his son.

“Come on in and make yourself at home,” Belle said, allowing him into her apartment and pushing the door closed behind him. It was a much smaller place than his own and it gave the impression of being very cosy and homely.

“I like to feel snug,” Belle said with a shrug. “I’m used to the heat, back home in Australia. New York’s like an iceberg in comparison. Can I get you a drink? It’s all plonk I’m afraid; I buy expensive wine to cook with and cheap wine to drink with it.”

“As it should be,” Gold agreed, and he accepted the glass of white wine that Belle poured for him. It wasn’t too bad; certainly it wasn’t going to be up to the standard of the wines served at the restaurant any time soon, but it wasn’t akin to the paint stripper that his ex-wife had been so fond of. Considering how much wine Milah got through of a week, he’d have thought that she’d appreciate him introducing her to some slightly more upmarket bottles, but apparently not.

“So what are we having today?” he asked, peering over Belle’s shoulder into the kitchen.

“Seared seafood with a lemon and herb jus and mashed potatoes,” Belle said.

“Scallops?” Gold hedged, and Belle rolled her eyes. Over the last few weeks of working together, they had long since learned that Belle had a certain distaste for scallops that he had never been able to get to the bottom of. “What’s wrong with scallops?”

“There is nothing wrong with the humble scallop in and of itself,” Belle said. “I have no disrespect for the people that enjoy eating scallops. I just don’t like them. There’s something about the texture that’s just… wrong.”

“How is it wrong?”

“It just _is_. Like I said, I grew up in Australia. We eat a lot of seafood there and I was introduced to the wonders of all different kinds of seafood at a young age and gained a great appreciation for all of it except scallops.”

“Fair enough. Is there anything I can do?”

“Well, I won’t make you go back to your earliest days in the kitchen and peel the potatoes.” Belle winked. “No, you can just keep me company.”

“You know, one of these days I’m going to have to cook for you,” Gold pointed out. “This is the second time that I’ve taken a back seat.”

“Well, you worry so much about everything that’s happening in the kitchen in your day job, I thought that you must enjoy not having to worry about it when you’re not at work.”

“To be honest I spend most of the time I’m not at _Dragon’s Roost_ in my own kitchen. I might have a slight obsession with food.”

“I would never have guessed.”

They kept chatting amiably whilst the potatoes boiled and Belle prepared the seafood, and she had just begun to cook it when the phone barked into shrill life and Gold gave a squawk of alarm. Belle for her part did not even blink, her attention focussed only on the seafood in the pan in front of her.

“It’s fine,” she said, making no move to answer the phone.

“I can take over here if you want to go and answer it.”

“It’s all right, it won’t be anything important. If it’s important then they’ll leave a message or call back later.”

Gold wished that he could have the same level of wonderful calm that Belle displayed. Even in the middle of service in the kitchen with all the heat and noise and pressure, Gold had never known Belle panic or get frazzled. The phone cut off, and he heard someone speaking, leaving a message. His brow furrowed; it sounded like Mal, and he left the kitchen and the sizzling sounds of searing langoustines and squid to follow the voice through to the hallway where Belle’s house phone sat.

_“… just wondering if you’d had any more thoughts about what I said regarding a permanent position at Dragon’s Roost. Give me a call when you’ve come to a decision, I want to see if I can get the paperwork in before Christmas.”_

Gold’s blood ran cold. Mal had offered Belle a permanent position at _Dragon’s Roost_. Belle was only supposed to be temporary whilst Gold got back on his feet with Neal and Aurora was on maternity leave. The only permanent position for a chef of Belle’s calibre in the restaurant was Gold’s own.

Mal was giving Belle his job.

“You know, it’s considered extremely rude to listen to other people’s private messages.”

Belle’s voice was icy, doing nothing to help the chill in his veins, and Gold spun round to see her standing in the living room doorway, mouth set in a thin line and fire in her eyes. He could see that she was angry, but in that moment, his own anger was bubbling up inside him and blinding him to everything else.

“So this is what it’s all been about,” he said.

“What’s what all been about?” Belle challenged. Gold pointed at the phone accusingly.

“Mal offered you a permanent position.”

“Yes, she did,” Belle replied calmly, and whilst a moment ago Gold had admired her tranquillity, now it felt like she was merely adding insult to injury, rubbing salt into the wounds.

“So all of this has been a lie then?” he exploded.

“What are you talking about?” Belle countered. “You’re overreacting, Aiden, for God’s sake!”

“Overreacting! How can I be overreacting when all this time you’ve been getting close to me, making me think that you liked me and that I liked you, lulling me into a false sense of security when all you really want from me is my job!”

“For the love of… I am not stealing your job, Aiden, where the hell have you got that from?”

“Mal offered you a permanent role! The only permanent role for someone of your quality is mine! Was that your plan all along, to come to _Dragon’s Roost_ and learn the secrets of my horseradish cream sauce and then kick me out? Did you and Mal cook this up together?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Belle snapped. “Is that really what you think of me? That I’m some kind of black widow who seduces chefs for their jobs? Really? I thought you had more class than that, Aiden.”

“Well, there had to be a reason why you turned down Merlin Emrys at fucking _Camelot_ to come here! You’re not content with your own place, you want to steal mine!” Gold was panting at the force of his outburst, and seeing the cool indifference in Belle’s face was not doing anything to help him calm down. “That restaurant is my life, Belle! It’s all I have and without it I am nothing! I have poured blood, sweat and tears into that place, it’s been all I’ve cared about for so long and I cannot have someone rip it away from me and leave me with nothing!”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel then I guess you won’t have to worry anymore,” Belle spat. “If you really feel that way, then Mal will have my resignation first thing in the morning and you can be content in the knowledge that your precious kitchen is free from nasty little usurpers like me. Now get out of my home.”

Her fury was frightening, and Gold scrambled to grab his coat where it was hanging by the door.

“You know, I thought you were different,” Belle said, still not moving from her position in the living room doorway. “Once I started to get to know you, I thought that the rumours were wrong, that you were a decent human being beneath your prickly exterior. But no, you really are as bad as people say.”

The door swung shut in his face, and Gold made his way towards the stairs. Just when he thought he could finally let someone in, and this was what had happened. Well, let that be a lesson learned. It was true, as much as he had held out the vaguest flicker of hope that it wasn’t. No-one could ever truly love him. Even to Belle, who had been so bright and genuine, a light in his life, he was only the means to an end, a stepping stone on her path to greatness to be crushed under her heel when he was no longer required.

Sinking into a seat on the subway, Gold found his ire dissipating as the adrenaline left his veins. It was his own fault, really. He should have known that Belle’s interest in him couldn’t possibly be real and he shouldn’t have allowed himself to get his hopes up. He was just going to have to be even more careful in the future. By the time he reached his own home, he was wallowing in something akin to miserable self-pity. He knew that he ought to be happy; Belle would be leaving the restaurant and his job was safe, but he still couldn’t help mourning the relationship they’d never really had. It had been such a good thing whilst it had lasted and Neal… Gold sighed; Neal and Belle got on so well and he was going to have to break the news that the one person he thought of as sort of a friend had turned out to be not as she seemed.

“Dad?” Neal peered out of the living room. “You’re back early.”

“Yeah. Something came up.”

“Oh. Ok. What happened?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it, Neal. Maybe later.”

“Ok.”

Neal went back into the living room and Gold heaved himself into his makeshift office, sitting down at the desk and looking at the blinking light on the phone telling him he had a message. He glanced down at his cellphone and saw that it was dead; in all his frantic worrying before going out to Belle’s he’d forgotten to charge it.

He pressed the button to recall the messages and was surprised to hear Belle’s voice.

_“You know, if you’d actually listened to that message instead of jumping to conclusions, you’d notice that I hadn’t given Mal an answer to her proposition. I wanted to discuss it with you first, but it seems like that’s redundant now. Oh, and for the record, Aiden – you might say that the restaurant is the only thing you have and the only thing you care about, but you have so much more. You just need to get your head out of your own arse long enough to see it.”_

Gold sighed, burying his face in his hands. He’d managed to get it so completely wrong, and he had no idea what to do about it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Ten**

The restaurant was practically silent as Gold walked in, all of the kitchen staff and waiting staff staring in his direction from where they were sat around the long table in the middle of the usual daily staff briefing. The looks being passed his way were cold and some were fumingly mutinous, and Gold could immediately see why.

Belle was nowhere to be seen.

Gold ignored them, moving towards the locker room to change into his whites. Mal followed him in, leaning back against the door.

“I hope you’re bloody pleased with yourself,” she said sourly.

“What have I done now?” Gold asked, buttoning his jacket and trying not to think about what had inevitably happened, because that would just make it all the harder to swallow.

“Belle handed in her notice with immediate effect,” Mal snapped. “So well done. You’ve got what you wanted. The kitchen’s all yours again. Bravo.”

Gold wheeled round to face her. “You gave her my job!” he exclaimed. “You were going to get rid of me! Cast me out on the street after everything I’d done for you! She swans in with her winning smiles and her training in bloody...   _Olive Garden_ and suddenly she’s the best thing since sliced bread and you give her my job!”

“I did not give her your job,” Mal said. “I offered her a permanent position here so that you could take more time out to be with Neal and take flexible hours when you need them. I never said anything about anyone being replaced.”

Gold took a deep breath. Ok, so the message hadn’t said anything about Belle taking over the head chef position, just taking up a permanent position. But given everything that had happened in the restaurant over the past couple of weeks since Neal had re-entered his life, could Gold really be blamed for fearing the worst? He hardly recognised the place now, Belle had left so much of a mark on it.

“Where’s she gone?” Gold asked. Mal shrugged.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who knows her best. If anyone would know that, you would. Oh, but of course, you’re not speaking to her because you think she was just a predator after your job, don’t you?”

“How can you make me into the villain here!” Gold exclaimed.

“Maybe because you single-handedly managed to fuck up one of the best things that’s ever happened to you!” Mal yelled back. “You’ve been handed an amazing opportunity, Aiden, one that I would kill to have again. You get to be a dad. Do you know how much I would give to have Lily back? I got two months with my daughter and those were the best two months of my life. You’ve been given this gift and you’re throwing it away! Everything that I’ve done, that Belle has done, that everyone around you has done, it’s been to try and help you but you never see that! You just see it as this great big conspiracy to take this restaurant away from you!” Mal paused for breath, her chest and shoulders heaving with the force of her ire. “You know what, maybe I should have just fired you and let Belle take your place. Then you’d realise what truly matters in this life. And it’s not this kitchen.”

Gold thought back to Belle’s message on the answerphone from the night before.

_Oh, and for the record, Aiden – you might say that the restaurant is the only thing you have and the only thing you care about, but you have so much more._

“Mal, I am sorry about what happened to Lily,” he said. “I know how much she meant to you and I know how much it hurt when Milah took Neal away.”

Mal just stood there with her arms folded and Gold gave an exasperated sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “Look, what do you want me to say, Mal? Do you want me to go to Belle begging her to come back?”

“It would be a start,” Mal said snidely and Gold gave her a look.

“I was joking,” he said flatly.

“I wasn’t.” Mal’s hands were clenching and unclenching, her red, talon-like nails looking ready to let fly at any moment. For a moment she looked every inch the dragon that her restaurant was named after. “All I’m doing, all any of us are doing, is trying to help, Gold. You know that. I know you know that. I don’t get why that’s so incredibly offensive to you.”

“It’s not…” Gold didn’t know what to say. He’d been conditioned by life not to accept help, having gone so long and come so far without it that it seemed like a weakness to accept it.

Mal shrugged her shoulders. The fight had left her now, and she looked woefully resigned.

“I hope you’re happy, Aiden,” she said. “Fighting for what you think is important.”

She left the locker room and Gold grabbed his apron, tying it securely as he moved out into the kitchen, ready to start the evening’s preparations. The other kitchen staff filed in, all of them either giving him the evil eye for driving their beloved Belle away, or giving him wary looks, like deer caught in the headlights, expecting him to snap and shout at them at any moment. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t think he could yell even if he wanted to. There was something in the back of his mind that was causing a lump in his throat. He’d been scared, and he’d lashed out in fear, but all that had come of that was two people getting horribly hurt and nothing being resolved. He was going to have to explain it all to Neal as well, the fact that he wouldn’t be seeing Belle anymore and that she’d only been trying to help. He hated that his knee jerk reaction had been to expect the worst even though Belle had given him no reason to, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

You’re a prize idiot, did you know that?” Jefferson had come into the kitchen and was sorting out wine bottles and champagne magnums for the chiller, checking dates and temperatures.

“Believe me, Jeff, I know.”

“I thought for a minute there that we were actually getting through to you,” the maitre d’ said without looking up from the wine. “That you’d finally stopped being so damn defensive all the time and you’d let someone in. I knew it was too good to be true.”

“Yes, I screwed it up with Belle and I’ve made everyone else in this room hate me more than they already did, I don’t need reminding of that thank you, Jefferson.”

Jefferson finally looked up at him and gave a wan smile.

“You’re not alone, Gold,” he said. “I think that’s the thing that you never really seem to understand. You’re not alone anymore, and it’s fine to admit to people that you’re scared, that you don’t know what you’re doing. Look at me and Grace. I never expected for a moment to be a single dad and I still don’t have a clue how to go about it five years later. You don’t know what you’re doing and that’s all right. I promise.”

Gold leaned heavily on the worktop with a sigh. “I know that. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

Jefferson shrugged. “Apologise to Belle,” he said. “Tell her why you reacted the way you did. She’s a nice person, Gold. Genuinely nice and caring. She’ll understand if you explain why you lashed out and apologise to her. Your past doesn’t excuse what you did but it does help to understand it. You’re an idiot but most of us still love you anyway.”

Gold sighed. Jefferson made it sound so easy.

X

“I’m an idiot.”

“Well, I could have told you that.” Regina scribbled something on her notepad as she spoke, not looking up at him, and Gold turned his gaze back to the ceiling. It was probably the first session they’d ever had with Gold lying on the couch like in a traditional therapy session. Ever since Belle’s departure from the kitchen, something had felt different, strained almost. Everyone was looking at him as if he was about to implode at any moment, and the trouble was, he felt that way too. He’d tried to pretend that it didn’t matter and that he’d got what he wanted, but at that moment, he really didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted security, and he’d got it, but at what cost?

“Do you think that everything in this life comes with a price?” he asked Regina presently.

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, it’s becoming clear to me that no matter what I want in life, I have to sacrifice something in order to get it.”

“I think that’s true of a lot of things,” Regina said. “The turning point comes when you regret the sacrifices you’ve made because they didn’t bring you the things that you wanted. Is that the case with Belle?”

“Possibly.”

“You’ve got two main areas of awareness that are coming into conflict,” Regina remarked. “Firstly you’re incredibly defensive and secondly you don’t believe in yourself.”

Gold shot up from the couch, giving the therapist an incredulous look.

“Your self-esteem is very low,” Regina pointed out. “But your self-image is very important to you. With the situation you’ve found yourself in, those two things have come into conflict. Because you don’t believe that you can be loved, you’re immediately defensive when people care about you because you think it can’t be real, that someone is playing a trick on you. And of course, the best defence is an offence, so you strike pre-emptively in order to protect yourself.” Regina spread her hands. “I can’t teach you how to trust people; opening up is something that you have to do on your own. But despite everything that we’ve thrown at each other, you’re not unworthy of love and you’re not unworthy of help, and accepting help doesn’t make you worthless.”

“I know that. I just don’t know how to go about making it better. I don’t think I can change. I’m too old and too set in my ways to just become a new person.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “Changing the way you think about yourself doesn’t make you a new person. You’ll still be just as grumpy and annoying as you always were, you’ll just have more faith in yourself when you are.”

Gold raised an eyebrow. “I am paying you, you know.”

“I know, but you’re not the type to appreciate pussyfooting. We’ve already established this.”

“Yes.” There was silence for a long time. “So what should I do about Belle?”

“Well, I have to say that relationship counselling isn’t my speciality, but I imagine that telling her the truth is probably a good idea.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

“That’s not really a reason, Aiden.”

“Because…” Gold sighed. “Because I can’t let her know how vulnerable I am. I already told her that the restaurant was my life and that it meant everything to me.”

“Yes, and you accused her of maliciously stealing it from you, as I recall.”

“Well, yes.”

“But isn’t being vulnerable part and parcel of being in a relationship?” How Regina could be acting so calmly about the whole thing was beyond Gold. He was certain that she was doing it on purpose just to needle him. “Everyone always talks about being oneself when in a relationship.”

“That’s great advice except when oneself is pathetic coward,” Gold snapped. “There, I said it, are you happy now?”

“This isn’t really about me. I’m just trying to help you to help yourself.”

“If I tell Belle the truth then she’ll realise just how unworthy I am and then everything will be well and truly ruined.”

“You mean it wasn’t well and truly ruined before?” Regina asked. Gold glared at her.

“At least it was ruined on my terms,” he muttered.

“You’re very dramatic, has anyone ever told you that?”

Gold snorted, it was something that Jefferson told him every day. Regina continued.

“You have classic symptoms of anxiety. You constantly and consistently imagine the worst outcome to any situation without thinking about any of the possible good outcomes.”

“There’s no point in thinking about the good outcomes,” Gold said. “There’s no point in preparing yourself for something good happening, but if you can prepare yourself for the worst then it softens the blow.”

“But maybe consider, for just one moment, the worst not happening?”

“The worst always happens.”

“All right, let’s use a proven technique. You’re going to talk to Belle. What’s the worst that could happen.”

Gold thought about it, a long list of increasingly terrible things building up in his mind, and he began to enumerate. Regina had to stop him halfway.

“All right, and how likely is it that any of those things will actually happen?”

“Exceedingly.”

“I think not, given the balance of probabilities, but nonetheless… What’s the thing that is most likely to happen?”

“I already told you!” Gold snapped. “I’ll be a laughing stock, Belle will never speak to me again, my reputation will be ruined, I’ll never work again, I’ll lose all respect in the industry, Mal will fire me, my son will hate me even more than he already does and I’ll die destitute and alone!”

There was silence in the room for a long minute, and finally Gold looked across at Regina. She was rubbing her forehead.

“You know, in anyone else, I’d think that you were deliberately being stupid, but I can tell that you earnestly believed every word you just said. How you got from having a conversation with your girlfriend to dying destitute and alone is a pretty big leap but I promise you that it is not the most likely outcome. If Belle is a decent human being, then she will listen to you and talk to you. She won’t laugh at your fears and she’ll accept your apology.”

“And if she isn’t? If she doesn’t?”

The timer in the office beeped to signal the end of their session, and Regina gave a small smile.

“Then she isn’t a decent human being and she isn’t worth your time or worry.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Eleven**

Gold didn’t think he’d slept at all, but he must have done because the alarm roused him early like it usually did and he woke from an uneasy slumber. All night he’d been lying in bed staring at the light fitting and playing out every possible permutation of the conversation with Belle that would have to take place if he wanted to get anywhere with making amends. Regina’s coping mechanism – what’s the worst that could happen, how likely is it to happen, and what’s most likely to happen – wasn’t helping at all. Applying it to any situation in his life; it didn’t help. He automatically went straight to thinking that the worst possible scenario was the most likely to happen. He tried to think of instances in the past where this had not been the case, but it was impossible. It felt like everything in his life was one long worst-case scenario.

He reached out to silence the alarm and rolled out of bed with a groan, grabbing his robe from the back of the door and moving through the house to make coffee. Something made him pause outside the kitchen and he looked around, wondering what was out of place.

It was the front door. The chain wasn’t pulled across. The other locks were fastened in place as normal. Gold was sure that he had locked up properly, including the chain. It was force of habit whenever he came in of an evening. Brow furrowed, he crept along the corridor to Neal’s room, opening the door as quietly as he could, and feeling his blood turn to ice in his veins when he saw his son’s bed empty.

“Neal? Neal!”

Gold raced around the apartment as quickly as his battered joints could take him, but it was clear that there was no sign of Neal anywhere in the place. He wrenched open the front door and rushed out into the entryway in his pyjamas, but everywhere was still and quiet. Neal was nowhere to be seen on the street.

Gold swore violently and grabbed his phone, hitting Neal’s speed dial. It cut straight to voicemail, either the phone was off or it was dead.

He forced himself to sit down on the sofa and breathe. Neal was missing and he had to be found. That was all there was to it. He raced back into the bedroom and started throwing clothes on pell mell as he dialled Jefferson’s number.

_“Gold, it’s stupid o’clock in the morning, what the hell are you calling me for?”_

“Neal’s run away!” Gold exclaimed. “I need to find him.”

_“You what?”_

“MY SON HAS RUN AWAY!” Gold screamed into the phone.

_“Ok, I’m coming. Do you know where he might have gone?”_

“No, I don’t know, he’s only lived here a couple of months, he doesn’t know anywhere. He only knows school and the restaurant, there isn’t anywhere else. Well, Spencer’s office and the airport I guess. Christ, Jeff, what if he’s gone back to California?”

_“Gold, he’s fourteen, he’s not going to be able to buy a plane ticket to California and travel there unaccompanied.”_

“He could hitch hike!”

_“Gold, be reasonable. Let’s look for him in New York before we start worrying about whether he’s managed to get himself to California or not. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll meet you at the restaurant, I’ll call Mal, you call Belle too.”_

“I…”

He trailed off, about to say ‘I can’t call Belle’, but blind fear of Neal’s fate overriding every other self-preservation instinct in his body.

_“Gold? You still there?”_

“Yes. Yes. I’m here. I’ll see you at the restaurant.”

Gold was already on his way out of the building and on his way towards the restaurant as he dialled Belle’s number. Unsurprisingly, she did not pick up and the thing went to voicemail after ringing for what seemed like an eternity. Gold couldn’t really say that he blamed her, it was the small hours of the morning and if she’d woken up and seen his caller ID then she wouldn’t be in the wrong for turning over and going straight back to sleep, perhaps thinking that he was calling her drunk as a skunk and trying to apologise after going on an all-night whiskey bender. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time in his life that he’d done such a thing.

_“Hi, you’ve reached Belle French. I can’t come to the phone right now but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”_

She sounded so cheerful and bright on the phone, so unlike when he had last spoken to her.

“Belle, it’s Aiden, I know I’m the last person you want to hear from right now but…” He took a deep breath. “I need your help. Neal’s run away and I don’t know where he might have gone, I just… I’m desperate. Please help me.”

He hung up and rushed towards the restaurant. Jefferson was standing on the corner outside it, and Mal was with him, bundled up in a coat and a hoodie and looking so far from her usual immaculate self that Gold almost had to double-take.

“All right, let’s go in and make a plan and some hot tea,” Mal said, her teeth chattering as she unlocked the restaurant. The three of them rushed inside and Gold immediately started combing the place for any sign of Neal. He knew that it was a long shot, and that he was unlikely to have got into the place in the middle of the night, but he also knew that whilst he had been in New York, the happiest that he had seen Neal was here in the kitchen, when Belle had been introducing him to the way that the culinary world worked.

And when Belle had come over for dinner that evening, and they’d talked animatedly about the future, the mythical _Golden Plate_ bistro.

There was no sign of Neal in the kitchen or in the alley beyond where the bins were collected, and by the time Gold returned to the restaurant, Mal was pouring tea into flasks and Jefferson was pouring over a map of Manhattan, drawing little x’s.

“So, we can rule out the restaurant, maybe if we check the school next; we could also call taxi dispatch, see if they know of any drivers picking up unaccompanied minors in your area, work around in a circle and meet up back here and call the police.”

Gold nodded. Jefferson and Mal had taken control of the situation so effortlessly and here he was, a complete wreck.

“We should swing by Belle’s place too,” he said quietly. “Neal loves Belle. He might have gone to hers.”

Jefferson added another little x on the map, adding it to his own search area without a word, and Gold let out a long, shaky breath that he didn’t realise he had been holding. Mal put an arm around him and gave a sympathetic smile. He couldn’t understand how Mal could be so nice to him in the circumstances, when he’d just proven himself to be the worst parent ever. It was one thing to lose a child like Mal had done, but to have one run away because they hated you was entirely another.

“We’ll find him, Aiden,” Mal said. “I promise. He can’t have gone that far, and we’re here to help you.”

Gold nodded, and he looked over at Jefferson as they all got to their feet and made to leave the restaurant.

“It’s all right. I know how I’d feel if Grace ran away. It’s ok to feel like you’re falling apart. Neal’s going to be ok.

Gold couldn’t reply as he set off towards the school, keeping an eye out for Neal at every intersection. The more time that passed, the more vivid the images of his son having been run over by a car or fallen onto a subway line became, and he forced himself to push them to the back of his mind.

There was no sign of Neal anywhere near the school, and when he crossed paths with Jefferson at the next crossing, it was obvious that he had no news either.

“Mal’s on the phone to dispatch; she’s got nothing so far but we’ll keep trying.”

Suddenly, Gold’s phone burst into loud life and he looked down at the caller ID. It was Belle. His finger hovered over the answer button for a split second, wondering what she was going to say to him, but then he picked up.

“Hi Belle.”

_“Hey Aiden. I’ve found Neal.”_

“What?”

_“I’ve found Neal. Here, I’ll put him on.”_ There was the sound of scuffling on the other end of the phone and then Neal’s voice.

_“Hi Dad.”_

He sounded so small and so young, younger than his fourteen years, and Gold knew that he really was just a lost kid who’d run away from home and was regretting his decision.

“Hi Neal. Are you ok?”

_“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m sorry, Dad.”_

“I’m sorry too. I… Where are you? I’ll be there as soon as I can, I promise. I love you.”

The phone was passed back and Belle spoke again.

_“He’s safe at my place if you want to come over.”_

“I’m on my way.”

Gold hung up and in an uncharacteristic display of affection, threw his arms around Jefferson with a sob of relief. Neal was safe.

X

Belle brought a mug of hot chocolate over to Neal, tucking in the many blankets closer around him on the sofa, and she settled herself beside him to wait for Gold’s arrival. She hoped that he wouldn’t be too hard on his son when he came, but he had sounded so distraught on the phone when she had first received his message and so relieved when she had called him that she didn’t think she needed to worry. For all his faults, he genuinely loved Neal and would do anything to keep him safe. As soon as she had received the message, Belle had dropped everything and gone out to join in the search. As it turned out, finding Neal had been remarkably easy. She’d only gone a few steps away from her home when she had spotted something unusual in the back of the neighbour’s car, and closer inspection showed it to be a person sleeping, shivering under layers of coats and jumpers, a rucksack for a pillow. Even closer inspection had showed it to be Neal.

“Why did you run away?” Belle asked him presently.

“I heard your message on the answer machine,” Neal said quietly. Belle’s stomach turned in a painful somersault. If Neal running away had been her fault then she would never forgive herself.

“Why did that make you run away?” she asked, trying to keep the trembling fear out of her voice.

“When you said that Dad had said that the restaurant was the only thing he had. I realised that Dad cared more about the stupid restaurant than he did about me, so… I left.” He took a sip of the cocoa. “It’s ok, I’m used to it. Mom cared more about Killian than she ever did about me. I thought that things would be different with Dad, but hey. Guess it’s just one of those things.”

“Oh Neal… I know how it must seem but I promise you that your father loves you and cares about you more than anything. He’s just… scared, I guess. The restaurant means a lot to him because it was all he had for so long, but now that he’s got you he doesn’t really know how to let go of it. He panics.”

Neal nodded. “Yeah. He’s always thinking about the worst thing that can happen. I guess me running away didn’t help with that. He probably thought I’d got run over by a bus or something. Or that I’d got myself on a plane and gone to live with Mom on her boat in the middle of the Pacific or wherever she is.”

“Well, he obviously pulled it together enough to look for you and find you,” Belle said. “He didn’t just give up and accept that you ran away. If he really didn’t care about you then I don’t think he’d be as worried as he was.”

The doorbell buzzed and Belle went to look out of the window; Gold was standing by the front door and a taxi was just pulling away from the curb. She wondered how much he’d tipped the driver to get him to break the speed limit. She buzzed him in and went to open the front door.

“Neal?” he asked simply as he came up the stairs. Belle gestured over her shoulder into the living room and Gold rushed into the room.

“Oh Neal,” he breathed as he threw his arms around his son. “Oh Neal, I was so worried.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I’m sorry too, for whatever it was that made you want to leave. I know I’ve not been the best Dad, but I’m going to try and be better, I promise.” He paused with a sigh, knowing that it was time to really face up to the situation. “I know that it seems like the restaurant and my job is the only thing I care about, but the reality is that I’m scared. I want you to have the best life, Neal, and I don’t know how to give that to you without working every minute of the day. I’m doing it for you. I was scared that you would hate me because I wasn’t doing enough for you. But you are so much more important than the restaurant, please never think that I hold it in higher regard than you or that I care about it more than you. The whole reason I care about it so much is because I care about you so much.”

“It’s all right,” Neal said, his voice muffled in Gold’s coat. “I know. I just… Mom was never around, and I thought that when I came here to live with you, it would be better, but you’re never around either, and it feels like I’m second best for both of you.”

“Never, Neal.” Gold pulled his son in close for another hug. Over by the kitchen, Belle was watching them fondly.

“Can I get either of you guys some breakfast?” she asked eventually, once the moment was over and father and son seemed to be back on an even keel.

“Can you make pancakes?” Neal asked hopefully.

“Am I a chef or not?” Belle asked with mock offence. “Of course I can make pancakes, what kind of second-rate cook do you take me for? One stack of pancakes coming right up.” She smirked. “Do you want to help?”

“Ok.”

Neal shrugged off the coats and blankets that he had been bundled up in and went into the kitchen. Gold hung back, and Belle could tell that he wanted to speak to her.

“Belle… I’m so sorry about what I said the other day. I was scared and I was a fool, and I’m sorry.”

“I know.” She gave a little smile. “I know how much courage it must have taken you to make that phone call to me this morning after everything you said. It’s ok to need help, you know.”

“I know.” He paused. “Belle, if you want the permanent position, it’s yours. It’s terrible that it’s taken something like this to show me where my priorities need to lie, but Mal and you are both right, I think I’m going to need to take some time away from the kitchen for a while and really work out where everything is going. And after everything that’s happened over the last couple of weeks, I can honestly say that I trust you to look after things as they should be.”

Belle laughed softly. “You know that our styles are very different. I wouldn’t suddenly start doing everything your way.”

“I know, but I don’t expect you to. Perhaps my way isn’t always the best way. And what Neal said the other day, about opening our own place; that’s been at the back of my mind ever since. Perhaps it’s time to spread my wings and let some young blood take over at _Dragon’s Roost_.”

“Well, if you’re sure, I’d be happy to be that young blood.”

There was another sharp buzz at the door and Belle went over to answer it, peering out of the window. Mal and Jefferson were outside, hopping from foot to foot in the cold, and she let them in.

“I guess we can tell them the good news,” she said.

“We’re going to need a lot more pancakes,” Neal observed as he heard Mal and Jefferson’s voices coming down the corridor towards the apartment.

Gold just laughed, and Belle looked up at him. There was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read, and she smirked.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m wondering if it’s too soon to kiss you,” Gold admitted.

“It probably is,” Belle said. “But I’ve never been one for doing things by the book, and it’s a special occasion, after all.”

She leaned in, pressing his lips to his, and he relaxed into her embrace. They still had a long way to go, all of them, and it would definitely take time to repair all the various little bonds that had been broken, but Gold had taken that huge first step that a month ago he would not have been able to. He had admitted that he needed help, and he had apologised. That meant a lot, and Belle was confident that they would get through what remained together.


	12. Chapter 12

**Epilogue – Two Years Later**

“Are Emma’s pancakes ready?”

Neal was practically hopping up and down at the pass, waiting for Gold to slip the final pancake out of the pan and onto the stack. Neal was about to grab the plate when the chef snatched it back and began decorating it with fruit and powdered sugar.

“Neal, if you’re going to be a waiter and I’m going to pay you for your work, you need to learn the rules of the kitchen,” Gold said.

“I _know_ the rules of the kitchen,” Neal moaned.

“Then what’s the first rule?”

“Always wash your hands.”

“All right, I’ll give you that one. What’s the first rule when it comes to taking food out of the kitchen?”

“It’s not ready until you say it’s ready,” Neal intoned. “Well, is it ready?”

Gold plucked a sprig of mint and set it on top of the berry pancakes. “It’s ready. Now don’t speed off so fast that you drop it!” he yelled after his son as the restaurant’s youngest waiter grabbed the plate of pancakes and sped off out of the building to the tables outside, where his girlfriend was waiting patiently for her brunch, and Gold gave a contented sigh. Looking through the pass into the restaurant proper, he could see the red writing in the window clearly proclaiming that _The Golden Plate_ bistro was open for business. The plates weren’t actually golden, he’d had to draw the line at that even though Neal had been all for it when they had been planning the place. He grabbed the next order and returned to the hotplate, beginning to mix the necessary ingredients. He didn’t think that he’d ever been so relaxed in the kitchen. Certainly he enjoyed creating the haute cuisine dishes that had always graced the tables of the other restaurants that he had worked in, but when push came to shove, cooking for his family was the thing that he had always enjoyed the most, and now he got to do it every day.

“Hey, chef.”

Jefferson came up to the pass bearing an untouched plate of food, and Gold raised an eyebrow at the burger and fries.

“What is it?”

“Table eight, says it’s not cooked properly.”

Gold took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, as all the therapists were so fond of telling him to do.

“I’ll have another one out in five,” he said. He was glad that Jefferson had decided to leave _Dragon’s Roost_ and help him out at the bistro. Whilst being head waiter at a small place with a reputation that was still being built up was nowhere near as lucrative a career as being the maitre d’ at an established sleek restaurant like Mal’s, Jefferson had admitted that he was grateful for the change of pace giving him more time with his daughter.

Gold went into the cold room and took out another burger, flipping it onto the grill. That was what it was all about, really. Family. Although these last two years had not been plain sailing and had involved a lot of long hours and hard work whilst Gold got the new place up and running, he’d had Neal’s support for every step of the way; his son had wanted to be involved and once he turned sixteen had been eager to start working his way up the culinary ladder just as his father had done. Gold could not believe how far they had come since that awkward evening in Spencer’s office. He supposed that he really had Milah to thank for that, and he gave a snort of ironic laughter at the thought. If she hadn’t swanned off when she had done, then none of this would ever have happened. He would never have had this time with Neal, he would never have met Belle; he would never be running his own restaurant and he certainly wouldn’t be feeling quite as happy and fulfilled as he was now.

“Service please!” he called, plating the fresh burger and setting it on the pass. No waiting staff were forthcoming and Gold rolled his eyes on seeing that Neal was still outside talking to Emma. Jefferson came over.

“I’m going to dock that boy’s wages if he spends any more time out there chatting,” Gold muttered. Jefferson just laughed, bearing the plate away, and Gold returned to the kitchen, occasionally stealing little glances out at the two lovebirds. He couldn’t really begrudge Neal too much, but he was trying to run a functioning eatery here and if his waiter kept absconding then he didn’t know what he would do.

“Chef.” Gold glanced at Jefferson over his shoulder again. The younger man was leaning in through the pass with an incomprehensible look on his face.

“What is it this time?”

“Table eight wants to know if you’ve ever seen a properly cooked burger before.”

Gold took a deep breath, checked that nothing was about to burn, and left the kitchen. Certainly his anger management had come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years and Regina was proud of his progress (not that she’d ever admit that to his face, but he could tell that she was deep down). That didn’t mean he still couldn’t… resolve culinary disputes, Jefferson had called it euphemistically.

“Chef!” Billy, normally concerned with peeling potatoes and washing the pots, gave a squeak of alarm on realising he was now alone in the kitchen. Gold leaned in through the pass.

“You’ve got this, Billy,” he said. “I trust you.”

Jefferson gestured over to table eight, and Gold was about to go over and give the diner a piece of his mind when he realised just who was sitting there.

Belle grinned at him, popping a couple of fries into her mouth and indicating for him to take a seat.

“I might have known that it was you,” Gold grumbled, but he sat down with her nonetheless. It was rare for Belle to come and visit him at the _Golden Plate_ , normally she was busy down at _Dragon’s Roost_ , getting ready for evening service and running the kitchen with the natural aplomb that she had shown when he had first met her, and that had only grown over the years.

“Well, I knew that would be the only way to get you out of the kitchen in the middle of service,” Belle said, a cheeky smile spreading over her face. Gold rolled his eyes but he did have to concede her point. His defensiveness would likely never leave him, as tempered as it had been over the months.

He leaned in to kiss her before grabbing a couple of her fries. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see my darling fiancée of course,” Belle said. “You know, at this rate you’ll be doing breakfast service on the morning of our wedding day. But enough of that. I came to see you because I’ve got news and I didn’t want to wait until the end of service tonight to share it with you because we’d both be dead on our feet and no good for anything.”

“What’s this news, then?” Gold asked.

“I’m leaving _Dragon’s Roost_ at the end of the year.”

Gold blinked at her, not quite comprehending.

“What? Why? Have you had an offer from somewhere better?” He hadn’t even known that Belle was looking to leave the restaurant; she’d made an established name for herself there and was still pulling in rave reviews for her signature dishes. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if another one of the up and coming restaurants had headhunted her for their head chef, but he knew her loyalty to Mal.

“Well, if you’re looking for a sous chef here I’m always willing to give you a hand.”

He knew she wasn’t serious, but Gold couldn’t help raising an eyebrow.

“You know what happened the last time you worked under me,” he said. “It would be spatulas and frying pans at dawn, and whilst I’m sure that would be very entertaining for the customers, it would be terrible for the food.”

“I think Neal would be able to keep us in line.” Belle fed Gold a fry before taking a large bite of her burger. “No, I haven’t had an offer from anywhere else. I just think that the end of the year will be the right time for me to take some time off from cooking, you know?”

“Chef!” Billy called through the pass. “The chicken!”

“You can plate it, Billy, I trust you,” Gold yelled back. Despite this endorsement, the young man looked absolutely terrified as he disappeared back into the kitchen, but sure enough two plates of chicken appeared on the pass and Jefferson bore them away to their recipients without fuss. Gold turned back to Belle.

“So, what’s brought on this sudden desire to take a break?” he asked.

“I was hoping you’d ask that.” Belle grabbed her oversized bag from the bench seat next to her and carefully took out what was quite possibly the smallest covered dinner salver that Gold had ever seen. His heart leapt to his mouth and started beating painfully there. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Neal had come back into the building at last and was hanging around by the till, trying to look surreptitious as he counted Emma’s change, but it was clear that he was watching the proceedings like a hawk.

Belle presented the little plate to Gold, who lifted the cover to reveal three positive pregnancy tests tied with a ribbon of chive.

“I…” Words failed him. He wasn’t sure what was the most mind-boggling thing; the fact that he was going to be a dad again or the fact that Belle had gone to so much trouble when it came to revealing the fact. “Top marks for presentation,” he managed finally.

“Is that really all you’re going to say?” Belle chuckled, taking the plate from his hands and setting it on the table beside them before grabbing his shoulders firmly and pulling him in for a long, deep kiss. The restaurant’s other patrons, who had naturally been intrigued by the chef coming out of the kitchen and sitting down with a lovely young lady, all started applauding. There was a wolf-whistle from somewhere and Gold had the sneaking suspicion that Jefferson was the culprit.

“I don’t know what to say, to be honest,” Gold said eventually, once Belle had released him and they were no longer the centre of attention.

“Well, whatever you do say, you’d probably better make it quick. Billy looks like he might be having an apoplectic fit in the kitchen there.”

“Ah, he’ll be fine. Baptism of fire. He’s got a lot more skill than he thinks he has. As long as nothing catches alight we’ll be ok.”

“I can hardly believe I’m hearing this from the man who, two years ago, would barely let his sous-chefs off the leash to chop a carrot without his strict supervision.”

“All right, all right, there’s no need to rub it in.” Gold took her hand and kissed her wrist. “Oh Belle, I love you so much, and I am so happy about our little one. We’ll have her searing scallops in no time.”

“Not scallops,” Belle said firmly. “Besides, it might be a boy.”

“Whatever she or he is, we’ll definitely be passing on the secrets of the horseradish cream sauce.”

“Can’t be a family recipe without a family to share it with.” Belle waved Neal over and he squished onto the bench beside her. Somewhere behind them, Gold heard a phone camera click, capturing the moment for posterity forever. He had gone from having no family at all to having a wonderful son and a beautiful fiancée and another bundle of joy on the way, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Cooking had been his life for as long as he could remember, but having someone to share it with, and having something so much more precious than just that restaurant, well, that was something that money couldn’t buy.

Life was sweet, and Gold knew that it would only get sweeter.


End file.
